California Apparel News

Inside Claire Stansfield’s roomy office, the bright fluorescent lights are turned off and soft table lamps cast a soft glow on the walls.

A vintage maroon velvet couch with a 1950s feel, culled from a storage space, sits against the wall to add a less corporate feel to the commercial ambience. Above hangs an old, oversize C&C California poster featuring a looming black-and-white image of actress Raquel Welch next to the C&C California logo of a glowing sun.

Stansfield has only been back at the label, which she co-founded, for little more than a month, but already she is adding her personal touch to resurrect a T-shirt label that became wildly successful after appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2003 as one of the talk-show host’s “Favorite Things”.

Soon after the TV spot, C&C California became the epitome of how a small California label launched by apparel novices hits the mainstream market and within a few years is sold for millions of dollars to a big East Coast corporation.

Many of those small labels go on to stardom. Think Juicy Couture and Lucky Brand Jeans, now owned by Liz Claiborne. Others go on to oblivion. Think Earl Jean, gobbled up in 2001 by Nautica Inc. Earl Jean lost its top-denim billing a long time ago. It is now owned by Jordache Enterprises.

Somewhere in between is C&C California, a tiny label founded in 2002 and sold to Liz Claiborne in 2005 for more than $28 million when the company’s annual revenues were $24 million. Then things began to unravel in 2006 when Cheyann Benedict left, followed by Stansfield a year later. The label was left on its own and never really regained its hot-property status.

When Liz Claiborne started downsizing its portfolio of brands, it sold C&C California and Laundry by Shelli Segal (another Los Angeles brand) in early 2008 for $34 million to Perry Ellis International, the Miami apparel conglomerate known primarily for its menswear. In recent years, the company has been branching out to womenswear.

Perry Ellis took over when C&C and Laundry’s annual revenues were shrinking, not expanding. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed by Perry Ellis, the combined net sales for C&C California and Laundry in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, were only $26.1 million.

The sales decline for C&C started under Liz Claiborne’s helm. Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus stopped carrying the brightly colored T-shirts that women used to grab by the handful as layering pieces. And many top-notch specialty stores felt the label had lost its exclusivity and uniqueness.

“We used to carry C&C for quite some time. We then stopped, as it was no longer as special or selling as well as it had in the beginning,” said Belen Hormaeche, head buyer for the trendy Los Angeles store Madison. “I feel that it lost its focus a little and became too mainstream.”

Makenna Burney, who owns two Lilikoi specialty stores in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, said she stopped carrying C&C California shortly after Liz Claiborne took over. She is still trying to sell some of the merchandise she bought more than a year ago.

“Some of the bodies that did so well aren’t doing anything. I think part of that is other brands came in that could make a similar product for a fraction of the price,” she said. “Obviously the economy isn’t doing well, and people are getting more wise about their money.”

Under Liz Claiborne, she had problems with shipping, invoicing and customer service. “The transition into Liz Claiborne was a tough one,” she said. Burney said she is still waiting to get her money back after Liz Claiborne triple-shipped some orders.

Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue still carry the brand, whose tunics sell for $98 and whose short-sleeved T-shirts retail for $36.

Hoping to turn C&C into a lifestyle brand with a tried-and-true contemporary following, Perry Ellis brought back Stansfield to work her creative wonders after the designer indicated she would like to return.

Perry Ellis executives couldn’t have been happier. “I think most brands lose their momentum or their equity because many times the founder decided to move on,” said Oscar Feldenkreis, Perry Ellis’ president and chief operating officer. “I am hoping for Claire to bring back the brand to its level of success. She knows the aesthetic of the brand. Also, bringing her back lends more credibility to the brand.”

Officially, Stansfield’s title is creative director of design and marketing, but she is taking on much more than that. She is retooling her brand to win back the customers who felt they couldn’t live without their C&C T-shirts made of buttery fabrics.

The actress-turned-apparel maker said she was weary of people telling her how the label had gone downhill, that the fabric was different and the fit was tighter. “I took that personally,” she said. “Half the label’s name is me.” (C&C stands for Claire & Cheyann.)

When Stansfield left the label a little more than two years ago, she was pregnant with her second son, Rocco, and mother to Lucky, her oldest son, now 4. Trying to work with a new corporation and be a mother proved to be too taxing for a multi-millionaire who didn’t need to work. “Once you are owned by a corporation, you have to hit your numbers,” Stansfield noted, saying she could no longer spend months developing a fabric. “The treadmill all of a sudden had gone from four to 10.”

Under Liz Claiborne, C&C was chasing trends instead of making them, Stansfield said. “I felt the brand was not going in the direction I wanted,” she recalled. “I felt we were going away from the basics and more into what the department stores were dictating. If there was a call for dresses, we did dresses. If there was a call for blouses, we did blouses.”

When C&C was created, Stansfield and Benedict spent months developing one fabric and designed a simple mix of garments: six bodies, 10 colors and one fabric.

T-shirts had to fit everyone, from Stansfield, a 6-foot-1-inch woman who wears a size 12, to the petite Benedict, who wears a size 4.

That universal size appeal is returning to C&C. Stansfield has all the design department wearing every garment in development. Sitting behind her broad desk enveloped in soft light, Stansfield is sporting a light-colored T-shirt the group is testing. The requirement is that the fabric feel right. Comfort is paramount. A classic look is supreme.

“When I came back, I walked into the design room and held up an original C&C T-shirt from a bag I had had for four years. Their mouths dropped. The fabric of the current C&C is still great, but it is not fantastic. They said, ’Wow. What is that?’”

To return to that fantastic fabric, Stansfield said, they are taking the original C&C fabric weave and developing it for other items besides T-shirts. Right now, the design team is working on a pant that is simple but classy and versatile.

“It is a pant that is not structured. It is about color and a soft feel. It doesn’t have zippers or a bunch of buttons. It is easy. It can go with flip-flops or a wonderful pair of heels,” the creative director said.

Simple is the theme right now for C&C. When Liz Claiborne took over the label, the idea was to expand into various lifestyle areas, such as swimwear, childrenswear, menswear and beyond.

Feldenkreis said the label is taking a step back and bowing out of childrenswear and loungewear for a while to concentrate on popular contemporary looks. “Under the control of Liz Claiborne, they hired many designers, and nobody knew what to do with C&C, which is why the brand lost a bit of its luster,” Feldenkreis said.

Leadership is all important. Under Liz Claiborne, Liz Munoz was head of C&C as well as president of Lucky Brand Jeans. When Perry Ellis bought the company, Stephen Cox, hired by Benedict and Stansfield as vice president of merchandising, became the president.

Cox left three months ago to work as the vice president of the men’s and women’s label Ever, leaving the company without a top executive. That makes Stansfield’s return all the more important for steering her label in the right direction.