(2 of 2)
Last year Wu-Wear made $10 million and opened four stand-alone stores filled with Wasp staples like varsity jackets, pea coats, hooded sweatshirts ("hoodies") and ski caps ("skullies"). Wu- Wear is one of the first inner-city styles that actually look good on white kids. And, of course, it's white guys who make up a big hunk of the hip-hop clothing market. FUBU was surprised to learn that as fly as it may be, one of its top markets is Washington State. Even those who take their fashion tips from PBS are joining on: when LL Cool J appeared on the Charlie Rose Show wearing a FUBU T shirt, the company received phone calls the next day from viewers asking where they could buy one. And the best barometers of mainstream America, Japanese junior high students, are buying the look almost exclusively, dragging their wide-bottom jeans through the streets of Kyoto and Tokyo. Phat Farm, the cartoonishly rural-themed stores selling the hip-hop label started by Russell Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records, says one-third of its customer base is in Asia.
Even some of the smaller labels--employing between 10 and 30 workers--have the distribution pull to get to Asia, and they're becoming players on the domestic scene. Positano, which is only two years old and still without a marketing staff or advertising budget, can be found in the Beverly Hills Macy's, smack between Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Ecko, which started selling clothes in 1995 from a two-story walkup in Manhattan's Washington Heights, had no department-store distribution when it grossed $36 million last year and was commissioned to design a 20-piece collection for The Lost World. But more than half the new street labels aren't really ghetto startups. They're vanity labels from music personalities like Wu-Tang, Simmons, Shaquille O'Neal (who also has his own record company, TWIsM, for The World Is Mine) and Chuck D. It's a Disney-like cross-pollinating strategy that, if it holds, can only lead to Wu Cafes and Wu Cola. Mmmm.
Many of these small designers insist they aren't dependent on a particular fad--that their labels can jump with the trends they pick up from the streets. Positano's Charles Lapson, one of the hippest designers in Los Angeles, is already looking to stay ahead of the curve, moving toward inside logos and some slimmer fits. But analyst Laurence Leeds, managing director of the Buckingham Research Group, thinks none of these companies will ever be as big as Hilfiger. "Fringe fashion is never volume," says Leeds. "What these companies do well is move fashion forward, but I have doubts whether the businesses can grow much larger." And despite their braggadocio, the designers may have doubts themselves. While Nike plans to unveil its new slogan--"I Can"--during the Super Bowl, Karl Kani will be pushing his basketball sneakers under a slightly less confident slogan: "Can I?"
--Reported by Patrick Cole/Los Angeles and David Thigpen/New York