Beach Boys Get in the Swim With Clothing Line

After years of playing hard to get in the fast-moving world of product licensing, the Beach Boys have agreed to let their name be used on a line of casual wear that is expected to be available in stores by Christmas, 1986.

Designer Sherry Holt, with whom the Beach Boys have formed a joint venture, says the clothes will appeal to a broad range of customers--California girls (Rhonda, Wendy, Barbara Ann), little middle-aged ladies from Pasadena and even guys like Alley Oop. The articles are expected to wear well in Palisades Park and on the Sloop John B, reflecting as they will the fun-in-the-sun philosophy the Beach Boys have espoused for the last 25 years.

We’re talking funky here--colorful, prints maybe a little on the raucous side, drawstring waists--the California Look. The pieces--including tops, pants, hand-painted ties, accessories such as caps and visors, screened T-shirts with beach scenes, swimwear, sandals and socks in what Holt calls “new color stories”--will be priced at $20 to $45. They’ll be made of cottons, rayons, linen weaves, corduroy and even a new rayon sharkskin.

“Now, everybody wants to look like an American, including the Europeans,” says Holt, a former design director for Ocean Pacific Clothing in Tustin who spent her growing-up years surfing in Hawaii. “Fashion is coming back to America.” Obviously, the crooners have come a long way from T-shirts, cutoffs and a pair of thongs (“we’ve been having fun all summer long”).

The joint venture evolved from a friendship between Holt and Mike Love, the Beach Boys’ lead singer, who started buying some of her tropical print designs about five years ago at a store in Santa Barbara. Wouldn’t it be nice, the Beach Boys eventually decided, to have Holt interpret their life style in a clothing line and distribute the apparel to retailers.

The new company--HOBO Clothing, for HOlt and BOys--will be based in Los Angeles and New York. It was formed from two companies: Moonfire, created by Holt and her husband, William T. Consedine, and the New Brothers Clothing Co., set up by the Beach Boys in keeping with their recording label, Brother Records.

The idea is picking up good vibrations from the Crafted With Pride Council, with which Holt met last week to discuss ways to ensure that most of the line will be produced in the United States. “It won’t be a totally U.S. line,” Holt says, “but we’ll make every effort to use the resources available to us in our own country.”