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Before celebrity stylists, social media and influencers, Los Angeles retailers gave denim brands their big break.

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_____ANGELA VELASQUEZ

he parking lot outside Fred SeT gal’s original Melrose location was hallowed ground for anyone with Hollywood ambitions in the 2000s. There, paparazzi waited for Paris Hilton to step out with an arm-full of shopping bags, and for Victoria and David Beckham to pull up in their not-so-inconspicuous convertible. Meanwhile on Robertson, Britney Spears shopped at 2:00 A.M. at Kitson, and three then-relatively unknown sisters, the Kardashians, opened a women’s boutique called Dash. And over at Barneys in Beverly Hills, Winona Ryder infamously helped herself to a five-finger discount. In short, Los Angeles’ retail scene was popping in the 2000s. And premium denim brands reaped the benefits of these retailers with celebrity cachet. As the curators of cool, American Rag, Fred Segal, Kitson, Rob Robinson, Scoop NYC and Barneys—on both coasts—made jeans by brands like 7 For All Mankind, Chip & Pepper, Citizens of Humanity, Earl Jeans and more, the new Hollywood status symbol. Before that, according to Adriano Goldschmied, the “godfather of denim” and House of Gold president, jeans were a commodity item in the U.S. “Those stores elevated the image of denim,” he said. “They created a new emoticon in consumers and also they offered a lot of different brands to choose from.” “At the height of their powers, these stores were the official arbiters of taste,” added Brian Trunzo, head of sales for Informa Men’s. “From underground cool kids to mainstream trendsetters, they crossed the spectrum like no one else.” Premium denim brand Chip & Pepper organically grew a celebrity clientele for its vintage rock 'n' roll jeans and tops in the 2000s. Celebrities like Britney Spears and Beyonce shopped at the brand’s Melrose store, but its partnership with Barneys did what no single celebrity or PR company could do, co-founder Chip Foster said. “They would build your brand and support you,” he said. “Barneys was smart because if you sold to Barneys you had to hold off on selling to retailers like Nordstrom, but we were doing millions with them. There was no need to sell to anyone else. You walked onto the third floor of Barneys on Wilshire and it was just a massive Chip & Pepper store.” In its prime, Trunzo said stores like Barneys had cachet with “twenty-something aspiration

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al shoppers who listened to Kanye West and watched ‘Entourage,’ as well as the well-heeled women who ate at Cipriani and watched ‘Sex and the City.’” “These stores,” he added, “were incredibly nimble in appealing to the tastemakers of every tribe, really. They had the trust of the emerging brands, and it paid big dividends in the form of hype and major selling events.”

Waning stars

Alas, a confluence of events, like the 2008 Great Recession and the subsequent retail downturn, led many of these megawatt retailers to lose their luster.

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Following several lawsuits, Kitson, which sold labels like 3x1 and Genetic, shut its stores in 2015, but was saved from bankruptcy by Spencer Spirit Holdings, owner of the novelty mall store Spencer’s and Halloween costume shops. After nearly two decades of business, Scoop NYC closed its stores in 2016, though Walmart resurrected it last year as its trendy in-house brand. Today, prices for Scoop denim start at $25, a far cry from $200- plus premium heyday. And Ron Robinson, which got its start as a shop-in-shop at Fred Segal, shifted to an online-only business model in 2019. Then there’s Barneys, which was sold off to fashion licensing company Authentic Brands Group in 2019 for $271.4 million. Following liquidation sales, Barneys stores closed for good in February. However, the new owners plan to reboot Barneys as a shop-in-shop at former rival Saks Fifth Avenue. In Barneys case, Foster said buyers panicked when more premium denim brands entered the space. At the peak of the premium denim market around 2004-2006, there were an estimated 2,500 denim companies in the Los Angeles area, according to Foster. Every entrepreneur, celebrity and athlete wanted to have a jean brand, he said. Companies were competing for pattern makers and technical designers, while simultaneously dealing with the constant theft of ideas. “Everyone was jockeying for position,” Foster said. “It was ruthless, but it was fun because millions were being made quickly.” However, it also meant denim brands were competing for retail space. “The buyers were under pressure to get the next latest brand seen in People magazine into their stores,” Foster said. And as a result, the brand stories they originally created on their sales floor were diluted.

Click bait

There is one other unmistakable difference between retail in 2000 and retail in 2020. The majority of U.S. consumers did not have the internet at the start of the new millennium, and those who did were using dial-up connections to connect to the World Wide Web. There were no social media platforms to plug consumers into fashion from around the world. The only influencers curating edits were buyers and the editors of fashion magazines—an industry that took its own nosedive in the late 2000s. Before the internet, Trunzo said these hotshot retailers had buying teams with impeccable taste. They had a direct line to all the young creators in every market. “If something interesting