Academy Boutique Launches Denim
The Academy boutique specializes in emerging and foreign denim brands such as Them and Naked & Famous, but the Long Beach, Calif., store recently put in its bid for the denim-production game.
In September, it quietly introduced its own denim line, called Academy, as well as chinos for bicyclists. This line is also named for the store. In October, it debuted a 15-by-20 tailoring studio in a loft above the boutique.Academy’s fashions will be designed in the loft, and pants can be altered there. The vast majority of Academy’s fashions are manufactured in Los Angeles.
The tailoring studio and the two lines of pants are initially appealing to people who prefer to buy fashion from local designers, said Vizal Samreth, who designed the pants and has co-owned Academy with his brothers, Bonal and Albert, since 2006.
Academy’s clients can customize the jeans with colored rivets that symbolize Long Beach neighborhoods and landmarks. An orange rivet represents Retro Row, a prominent vintage-fashion retail street in Long Beach. An olive-green color symbolizes oil derricks in neighboring Signal Hill. Retail price points start at $140.
Samreth also is a bicycling enthusiast who worked with a Los Angeles washhouse to develop chinos for bicyclists. The chinos feature proprietary inks that limit odors and wick away sweat. The inks come in five different colorways. The tailored chino pants are retail priced beginning at about $42.
Starting a fashion line is a natural for the Samreth family. The brothers grew up sewing after the family fled civil war in their native Cambodia in 1987. After graduating from California State University, Long Beach, Vizal designed products and trained people on computer-assisted design programs. He also is working toward a degree in product development from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.
Next on the Samreth brothers’ calendar is showing Academy at the first Cambodia Fashion Week, which debuts in Phnom Penh on Nov. 2 However, they plan to wholesale the line slowly and consider all retailer and consumer criticism of their new line. “It will force you to design something that is better thought out,” Vizal said.—A.A.
