California Apparel News

NSF is designed with a luxuriously casual look that can only be described as California chic. Launched in 2005, the brand is set to evolve and expand.

Inspired by its Southern California roots, NSF merges a relaxed sensibility with soft tailoring and a sexy tomboy look. For Spring ’12 it has expanded its women’s line with more knits and more categories, including dresses, leather and denim.

Founder Nick Friedberg originally launched the label as a menswear line which has gained a following for its casually cool, wearable collections.

A women’s knits collection was introduced last year. Directional yet understated, the brand builds on its menswear roots.

To help expand the brand, NSF recently tapped Jamie Haller as its new creative director. Haller is overseeing both the men’s and women’s collections in all aspects of design and development and is a natural fit for the collection. Haller has 10 years of design experience, including working as denim designer at Guess Jeans, collections designer at Bebe and design director for contemporary label Ever.

For Spring, Haller is merging her vintage-inspired, casually chic aesthetic into the line. “NSF is a dressed-up casual [line]. It’s very West Coast inspired; it’s only dressed up enough. It’s about easy elegance; it is a sloppy sexy [look] with understated styling. It’s effortless, and yet it is pulled together,” she explained in a prepared statement. “Our customer is feminine but not girly; she doesn’t try too hard. There is a tomboy-chic sensibility to her,” she added.

The line currently hangs in key stores such as Barneys New York and Intermix. And many top retailers have picked up the line for Spring, including Shopbop, Ron Herman and By George. “There’s a lot of potential for women’s because so far it’s been pretty small,” Haller explained. “[It has been] more knit top focused and [has] always had really special sweater knits. We have a fan base, and we have people who have carried the brand. Now we’re really giving them a more multi-dimensional collection where it sits more like a collection rather than a tops line.” Previously, the NSF women’s line was very casual, and it was “very literally borrowed from the boys,” she explained. “What we wanted to do with the evolution of the line is to really soften the hand-feel to feminize it and to breathe color and life and softness and touch and texture into the line.”

For Spring 2012, the core base of knits has expanded to include soft and drapy Italian hand-finished leathers, washed silk blouses and dresses, and garment-dyed bottoms. To style the collection, Haller likes to combine casual pieces with dressy elements. For example, an Italian linen jacket is sophisticated enough to dress up for work but also pairs back easily to jeans and a T-shirt.

“It’s not just dressy, and it’s not just casual,” Haller said. “One of my favorite outfits right now is a blazer, T-shirt and a pair of old jeans. It really represents the line,” she said.

T-shirts are a key element and provide an easy elegance. “I think T-shirts are super sexy, and they’re always the perfect canvas for a great necklace or a cool jacket that you’re going to put over it,” she said. Dresses have an easy sophistication such as a sheath that incorporates a vintage tribal-pattern hand-soutach detail on silk. Handwork and texture—such as a stylish sweater made of hand knit-tape yarns with ethnic fringe—are key to the line. A dress with a hand-dyed tie-dye placement-print effect is understated but pushes the fashion edge, and a popular caftan merges casual ease with sexy femininity. Other key pieces lean toward the tomboy aesthetic, including sweat pants, overalls and denim.

NSF launched men’s denim for Fall 2011, and women’s denim has been introduced for Spring 2012 with a more reserved approach. “We’re not trying to step out and say, ’Hey, we’re the newest denim brand.’ But it’s such a part of every single person’s wardrobe that it really makes sense if we’re doing this lifestyle collection to have it available,” Haller said.

The designer created a few favorite silhouettes with special washes such as a Japanese hickory-stripe straight/slouch-fit jean. All styles are made with Japanese selvage denim. “We really approach it from a very authentic denim place,” she said. “This is more for the denim aficionado connoisseur who loves denim—because that’s what we love. We just want to do it very authentic, very vintage-inspired and very true to denim.” LouisBoston and the Ron Herman Jean Bar have already picked up the line.

Wholesale price points range from $35 for knit tanks to $360 for leather jackets. Hoodies range from $68 to $72, silk blouses are $85 to $102 and silk dresses are $125 to $150. Denim is $128 to $140 depending on the wash.

“We use really premium wash houses, some of the best in L.A., and there are 30 to 40 hand processes on each jean,” Haller said. “We’re not skimping. We’re doing it really the way that we believe that it should be done. So the price is attached to that philosophy.”