Blurring the Lines Between Apparel and Accessories
A couple of Southern California companies are blurring the line between accessories and apparel—by recasting contemporary sweaters as fashion accessories and by using denim-friendly belts as springboards to launching a full denim collection.
Say
Yelena Sonkin is testing a new concept in the knitwear market: sweater as fashion accessory.
Designing under the Say label, the Santa Monica, Calif.–based Sonkin uses mostly hand looms to create sweet shrugs and sweaters that can be tossed over the everpopular uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. After launching the company in April, she debuted her line for Fall 2004.
The shrug, in particular, has caught on.
“It’s something you can accessorize your wardrobe with,” Sonkin said. “You want to have some fun, so you put a shrug on.”
A graduate of the Moscow Textile Academy, Sonkin arrived in the United States from Russia in 1992 and developed fabrics for Juicy Couture, Speedo and other companies before starting her own business. She makes the samples herself and hires knitters in El Monte, Calif., to produce 100 to 150 units a month.
Because of the success of a cotton yarn splattered with shimmering metal for Fall, Sonkin said she will continue using the Italianmade material for Spring and Summer 2005. In addition to white, turquoise and peach, she will offer navy and black.
The shrugs show details such as handstitched leather heart patches and 13 evenly spaced pairs of holes running up the back like a ladder. Shrugs wholesale for $79 and higher. For Spring, Sonkin also will offer short jackets that have three-quarter sleeves ($115 wholesale).
Sonkin said she will introduce, also for Spring, a kids’ line that resembles a smaller, cuter grown-ups’ collection, with shrugs ($45 wholesale) and cropped pullover sweaters ($62 wholesale) made of merino wool/nylon yarn. Sonkin counts more than 60 stores, ranging from A. Mason in Santa Monica and Henri Bendel in New York to Bzar in Sapporo, Japan, as customers.
For more information, call Ginny Wong at (213) 622-9884. —Khan T.L. Tran
Streets Ahead
Streets Ahead Inc. is breaking into the high-end denim market with the same strategy that it used in its successful belt business: embellish the heck out of a product.
Launched in September, the Vernon, Calif.–based company’s denim line is distinguished by Swarovski crystals, glass stones and studs that are set by hand in elaborate depictions of flora, religious icons and other objects.
Streets Ahead uses the same jean, a fivepocket stretch model with an 8-inch rise (made by sister company Blu Jeanious), as a base for all the embellishments. Wendy Yang, the company’s director of sales, said the intricacy of the artwork dictates the price, although wholesale prices start at $87. For the skirts, the company buys vintage Levi’s in bulk and refashions the pants into skirts before decorating them. One skirt’s waistband is covered in white leather and a matrix coral trim; the effect boosts the skirt’s wholesale price to $127. It comes as no surprise that everything must be drycleaned.
Yang said what differentiates Streets Ahead from other players in the closely watched premium denim market is fit and attention to detail, and its dual background as a belt maker and denim company helps. “You’re not going to get a plain jean from Streets Ahead,” and embellishment is the way to go, she said. “It’s the next generation, they say, of the denim market.”
The company uses about 15 types of studs, including turquoise studs with a patina finish. There are also some fabric appliqueacute;s, such as pink and black flowers, which, in a Chanel-influenced combination with glass pearls, adorn capris priced at $87 wholesale for Summer 2005.
Yang said the jeans are sold by more than 300 retailers, mostly specialty shops such as New York’s Intermix and Jami Lyn in Beverly Hills. Nearly all the stores that carried the belts picked up the jeans, she said.
The company aims to produce up to 25 new styles for each season. In addition, it decorates T-shirts ($39 to $69 wholesale) and jackets ($127 to $250 wholesale). Yang said she expects $5 million in wholesale volume in the first year.
For more information, call Yang at (323) 277-0860. —Khanh T.L. Tran
