California Apparel News

From 1975 to 2008, Silvia Kremer represented a number of denim brands, streetwear styles and preppy looks from her Kremer Group showroom at the California Market Center. She was one of the showroom building’s veteran tenants. On April 10, she died of a heart attack at the age of 71, said her son, Jim Kremer.

Born in 1948 in Buenos Aires, she and her family moved to New York City in the early 1960s where her father, Gregory Sandomir, who was born in Poland, set up a clothing factory. In the early 1970s, he moved the factory to downtown Los Angeles, where Silvia Kremer worked closely with her father’s operation. In the mid-1970s, she and her husband, Peter Kremer, represented the Rolling Jeans brand, which was manufactured by her father.

From her showroom, she sold brands including Calvin Klein, Jordache, FUBU, U.S. Polo Assn., Santana and Jean St. Jermaine. She often worked with such major retailers as Mervyn’s.

In an interview with the Men’s Apparel News, a sibling publication of the California Apparel News at that time, she said that Rolling Jeans would develop its own look and fill a void in the Jimmy Carter era of denim. “And the way we do that is by giving the people what they want, which is quality,” she said.

The Kremers were known as bon vivants. They owned a 35-foot yacht, where they threw parties and people disco-ed the night away, Jim Kremer said.

Silvia was part of the CMC building’s life, said Barbara Kaplan, a founder of Extra Secretary, which opened in the CMC in 1975, the same year that Kremer opened her showroom. “Everybody knew her,” Kaplan said. “She was always so friendly, sweet and helpful.”