California Apparel News

There are second acts for small brands.

PRVCY Wear and PRVCY Premium were up-and-coming California denim labels sold in top retailers such as Nordstrom until last year, when the brands’ parent company, Diamond Decisions Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In November, Omni Ventures Inc., a Kansas-based brand-development company, acquired PRVCY’s assets for more than $4 million in stock and debt. Omni Ventures plans to revive the brand with a new headquarters and design team that will be based in downtown Los Angeles.

Omni Ventures hired Christian Wicks, the former president of the English Laundry lifestyle label, as president of the PRVCY Apparel and Accessories Division, the newly relaunched denim label. The brand’s official relaunch is scheduled for the August run of Project in Las Vegas. From that point, Wicks intends to develop PRVCY’s licensing potential.

“I’m a brand builder,” he said. “[PRVCY] is a denim brand. But we are going to build it into a full collection.” Wicks grew up at English Laundry’s parent brand, Defiance USA. He spent more than 18 years at the company, starting at the warehouse and working his way up to president of English Laundry. He left English Laundry after Defiance USA sold 70 percent of its company to Bluestar Alliance, a private-equity and brand-management company, in February. A Bluestar team took over Wicks’ duties at English Laundry. (Wicks’ father, Defiance founder and designer Christopher Wicks, remains with the company.)

The debut of PRVCY’s downtown Los Angeles design office and showroom is scheduled by mid-July, Wicks said. It will be the first step in developing PRVCY’s new look, said Dan Reardon, president of Omni Ventures. “We expect Chris to develop a number of licensing deals, which would expand the variety of our product offering,” Reardon said in a prepared statement, “as well as counting on his input in identifying and developing additional opportunities with other clothing, footwear and accessories brands.”

In this slowly recovering economy, the outlook for denim is similarly mixed. Total denim sales for adults declined 0.6 percent in the 12 months ending in April, according to The NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.–based market-research company. Still, many prominent retailers are bullish on denim.

American Rag Cie opened its multi-brand World Denim Bar store in Newport Beach, Calif., in April and plans to debut a chain of denim shops—called Industry—later this year. Urban Outfitters Inc. is also rumored to be opening denim bars at various locations, although the Philadelphia-based chain did not return calls to confirm.

Consumers are developing a greater taste for a wide variety of denim looks after a period of preferring classic indigo denim, according to Jeff Shafer, designer and chief executive of Agave Denim, a denim label that has been sold at Nordstrom and specialty retailer Scoop. Women and men have been looking for a wider variety of silhouettes and colors. “It is really good for business,” Shafer said. “It creates more fashion and more opportunities.”

The demise of once high-flying premium-denim brands such as Rock & Republic has created a void in the market, according to Matt Bloomingdale, a director of men’s sales for the Dylan George fashion label. “It opens the door for new brands to come in,” said Bloomingdale, who is not related to the family that founded the Bloomingdale’s department stores. (Earlier this year, Greensboro, N.C.–based VF Corp. purchased the Rock & Republic label from bankruptcy and struck an exclusive-sales agreement with Kohl’s department stores for the premium-denim brand.)

Denim remains a tough market, said Danny Guez, Dylan George’s chief executive. “Retailers are sticking with the brands they know,” Guez said. “They just test one or two new brands every season.”