‘Shock-Ability’ and ‘Skul-Diggery’

Lip Service started with a charm. True, the charm was a skull pierced with a dagger, and more skulls, bones and knives have followed. But it’s intended as Halloween humor in Drew Bernstein’s rock ‘n’ roll clothes--despite the macabre motif and the fact that the designs probably go best with tattoos.

They also go well with the heavy-metal rockers who wear them, most notably Guns N’ Roses and Poison.

“Maybe some people see it as death,” says 26-year-old Bernstein of his trademark skull and dagger, the charm he still wears around his neck. “Maybe some see it as nuclear war. There’s a shock value.”

The skintight, snap-sided jeans, vinyl minis and motorcycle jackets are definitely not for the meek or out of shape. But there’s a Day-of-the-Dead quality in Bernstein’s skulls that is appropriate for clothes designed in Los Angeles with its strong Mexican heritage. And the images are hardly menacing. As for the Bad Boy/Bad Girl element to the look, Bernstein’s customers are on to the joke.

Lip Service made its debut four years ago with Bernstein’s dagger-print leggings, which he made in his parents’ garage. It has since grown to include an East Los Angeles factory, wholesale and mail-order businesses and a Melrose Avenue store. Bernstein says Lip Service had just under $1 million in sales last year, and he expects to do $1.5 million this year.

The growth can be attributed to Bernstein’s business sense--he talks about reading Inc. magazine and his awareness of blue-blood wannabe Ralph Lauren’s approach to making and selling clothes. He also has an obvious flair for promotion. The clothes can be seen on a number of hot bands, and Lip Service promotional freebies range from refrigerator magnets and sew-on patches to coffee mugs.

The mostly black-and-white collection, in cotton, Lycra, spandex, vinyl and “vegetarian leather” (a nylon fabric that looks a bit like Naugahyde), are reasonably priced, from $6 for dagger-print underwear to about $200 for the veggie-leather pants.

While the designs started out aimed at rockers (other Lip Service wearers include bands L.A. Guns, Aerosmith and Jetboy), people such as Heather Locklear and Justine Bateman (“she likes the dagger stuff”) have been walking into the store on Melrose Avenue since its opening in March.

The store--light, open and very slick--doesn’t even scare away suburbanites. On a recent weekday morning, two Roseanne Barr-esque moms in jeans and sweaters were helping their teen-age daughters select Lip Service outfits.

One of the moms cringed slightly while handing her girl a skull top to go with a vinyl mini, but no one seemed to be taken too far aback by the stuff.

Could the company’s growth, the new Melrose Avenue store and moms shopping with teen-agers hint at a mainstream acceptance? Bernstein insists not.

“I want to stay aggressive in the designs,” he says. “I want them to make a statement. I’m not going to sell out by stamping pink skulls on baby-blue fabric. I’m trying to keep the designs hard. I don’t want to wimp out.”

One such new design is a hypodermic needle entwined with a banner saying “No One Gets Out of Here Alive” (inspired by the Doors, Bernstein says). “It’s an anti-drug message,” he says, “but the druggies would probably buy it ‘cause it looks so cool.”

Bernstein’s “SEX?” jacket, originally made for W. Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses, has also attracted a lot of attention. It could be about AIDS, Bernstein says, or just a question, “Do you want to have sex?” There is also a “WAR?” theme, which also happens to be Rose’s initials. Reportedly, Cher received a WAR? jacket from Bernstein.

“We’re at the point where we’re turning bands away,” says Bernstein, who explains that bands come to him asking for free stage clothes. “And I have to like the music of the bands (before giving them clothes).”

And he’s savvy enough not to compete with himself. His clothes used to be in such rocker shops as Retail Slut on Melrose Avenue and Na Na in Santa Monica, but with the opening of his own store, he’s only doing wholesale out of town and out of country.

He is planning a new label of “stuff that doesn’t look like Lip Service” for other Southern California shops.

Bernstein, who looks like one of the rockers he dresses, doesn’t have much patience for the ‘60s Acid House trend in fashion that other young designers have latched onto. The revival of tie-dye, psychedelic, peace-sign-embedded clothes leaves him cold, he says. “It’s all those smiley faces.”