Academy Award Calls It a Wrap

An era in Los Angeles men’s retail came to an end when Academy Award Clothes announced recently it would shut its doors.

The 7,000-square-foot store, specializing in men’s suits, has done business in downtown Los Angeles since 1949. Its consumer business was not its only game. It supplied suits for television shows such as “Mad Men” and “Six Feet Under” and films such as “Spiderman,” “Dirty Harry,” “Rush Hour,” “Die Hard” and “Terminator.” Since 1972, Academy Award also manufactured the iconic gold blazers worn by salespeople for residential real estate company Century 21.

Academy Award President Peter Kaplan decided to close the venerable men’s clothier because he wanted to retire, his three daughters did not want to take over the business and men’s fashions had shifted significantly.

“What really hurt was the dot-com era and dress-down days,” Kaplan said. “Who wears a suit to work? Most men own one suit. They wear the suit to weddings and funerals.”

Kaplan owns the building where the store is located, 821 S. Los Angeles St. He will explore leasing opportunities in the future. Since Sept. 18, the store has been liquidating its inventory in a sale and will close by the end of the year. There are 10 employees at Academy Award. Kaplan said he hoped he could help them find other jobs. Kaplan planned to devote himself to volunteer work in his retirement.

In the store’s heyday, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Academy Award Clothes employed 45 people and earned more than $5 million in sales annually. After more than five decades in downtown Los Angeles, Kaplan remains not entirely convinced that the city’s much-vaunted revitalization program will reach the entire downtown area. “It has not spread to the 800 block of South Los Angeles Street,” he said.

However, his business remained consistently lucky in one matter. For decades, lawyers for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, the producers of the Academy Awards, occasionally issued letters demanding the clothier change the name of the business. Kaplan never changed the name, and the lawyers never sued. —Andrew Asch