California Apparel News

John Eshaya crafted his own version of California cool in the past 20 years. His JET John Eshaya brand has been celebrated for its ultrathin fabrics, as well as its T-shirts, sweats and jeans. The line is manufactured in Los Angeles and has long been sold in prominent boutiques such as Fred Segal in Los Angeles, where he started his career as a buyer.

The John Eshaya brand got a little bigger when he recently opened a boutique for JET John Eshaya at 8369 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles, near the city’s Fairfax District, where the designer grew up.

The fashion star opened the boutique for the traditional business reasons—to sell his brand’s clothes for retail price points and to give his retail partners and the fashion public the full view of his entire collection: jeans, blouses, sweats, printed shirts and some men’s looks.

Eshaya also wanted to join the conversation on boutique culture. “It’s a real specialty shop,” he said. It is a statement in a market that supports only a handful of specialty shops, and there are fewer fashion choices. He said he hopes to provide a different point of view with his new shop, which opened in April.

Along with selling Eshaya’s brand, the Beverly Boulevard shop also celebrates new looks by selling contemporary artists such as Brian Schetzle, vintage surfboards, vintage jewelry by Hermès and Chanel, and fine jewelry by his sister, Juliana Eshaya, who also manages the shop. Eshaya also designed the shop to be something of a hangout, with comfortable seats, copper piping racks inspired by his sister’s jewelry, pine and redwood floors, and soft lighting.

Eshaya also runs a store at Fred Segal Santa Monica at the compound’s 420 Broadway building. (Retailers housed in the compound’s 500 Broadway building left recently. The building will be redeveloped as a seven-story mixed-use site of residences and retail.) There also are two JET John Eshaya stores in Japan.

The JET John Eshaya label captures California style but puts its own mark on it, said Karen Meena, vice president of buying and merchandising at Ron Robinson, a Fred Segal boutique, which recently started selling John Eshaya. “It’s casual chic,” Meena said. “It is a style of what you think Los Angeles fashion would be—T-shirts, jeans and sweats—but he always adds an element that makes it fresh and surprising.”

Eventually, he’d like to open a few more boutiques, but he said that he would prefer to grow his brand in a steady fashion. It’s different than his design work, where he hopes to continually introduce something new.

“You become a creative junkie,” he said. “Great thing about this business is that there always is something new. After one collection, it is time for another. Keep on moving.”