The Magic Touch : Fashion: The Laker prefers conservative styles, but his T-shirt designs are just the opposite: bright and hip.

You won’t find exotic, “New Jack City” designs--or even a simple, wavy line--carved into his ultra-short hair.

He claims he has some funky items in his conservative wardrobe and specifies a jacket with lots of buttons--but his fiancee points out that he’s never worn it.

And although he enjoys high style, if an outfit automatically grabs the spotlight, he won’t even get near it.

Earvin (Magic) Johnson is not the guy you’d expect to be cleaning up in the fickle business of fashion. But Magic Johnson T’s, his T-shirt company, is one of the top 10 manufacturers of NBA apparel and is considered a design trendsetter as well. In fact, the Lakers superstar has done so well in the clothing business that he doesn’t even flinch when the subject of Michael versus Magic T-shirts comes up. The image of the Chicago Bulls’ Jordan has outsold Johnson’s two to one so far this year.

“We had Michael on more shirts (than any other player). He was the player this year. I’m happy to say I sold more Michael T-shirts,” says the ever-polite Johnson.

The T-shirt line--which features about 70 players and teams in the NBA, NFL and NHL--are bestsellers in many shops that offer licensed sporting goods.

“It’s the hottest T-shirt brand I have in my stores,” says Paul Morieko, buyer of licensed apparel for Footlocker, a national chain of about 1,400 stores. “For ‘91, I’ve ordered about $2.4-million (retail) from his company.”

But Johnson is not content with selling millions of dollars’ worth of T-shirts. Late last year, the NBA’s three-time Most Valuable Player and his marketing agency, First Team Marketing, tested a retail store concept in Santa Monica Place. At the end of this month, Magic’s 32, the first store in a planned chain, is scheduled to open in Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. It will offer an assortment of licensed sports paraphernalia: clothing, shoes and accessories.

A second store, in Johnson’s hometown of Lansing, Mich., and a third are scheduled to open by the end of the year.

The Baldwin Hills store will be managed by Cookie Kelly, Johnson’s fiancee. She’ll also do the buying for the stores.

“We’re going first-class,” Kelly says of the high-tech decor planned for each store, which includes a mini-basketball court, TV monitors and mirrored columns.

First-class clothing wasn’t possible for Johnson when he was the age of most of his T-shirt buyers (12 through 20, according to Footlocker’s Morieko).

Asked if he once had to buy his clothes in big-and-tall menswear shops, the 6-foot-9 Johnson says: “When I was young, I didn’t do any shopping. I had maybe two pairs of pants and one suit. . . . I don’t know if they were somebody else’s first.”

Now, Kelly estimates that Johnson owns close to 300 suits, all custom-made. He designs the styles himself, with a little help: “I tell different tailors different things. They know me by now. . . . They know what I like.”

About the only items he can buy off the rack are short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts, which he collects.

Kelly, who often shops for dress shirts to go with the custom-made suits Johnson has designed, describes his style as “classic with flair. He’s always had that taste level, even when he didn’t have the money to buy things.”

Johnson’s style was acknowledged earlier this year when GQ magazine named him one of the six best-dressed players in the NBA.

“I’m conservative but fashionable,” he says of his look. “I like to dress from head to toe. I will be up-to-date . . . but I’m not going to set a new trend. . . . I just want (clothes) to say that I’m a classy, conservative dresser.”

The goods offered by Magic Johnson T’s, however, are just the opposite: loud, bright and hip.

“At trade shows, buyers now hit the Magic Johnson T’s booth first to find out what’s hot. And there’s a lot of manufacturers who are knocking off what they do,” says Alisa Klemm, editor of Team Licensing Business magazine.

Johnson’s firm, she explains, was the first in the licensed sports apparel field to manufacture “belt” prints, in which a design extends all the way around a shirt.

Johnson’s T-shirts are not cheap. Jay Jacoby, Magic Johnson T’s vice president for marketing and merchandising, says they usually retail for $20 to $25. He defends the prices, saying that the shirts are all cotton and that printing and dyeing are costly.

But at almost any price, potential sales look promising. In the NBA alone, the manufacturers licensed to sell team- and player-licensed products racked up $173 million in retail sales in 1986-87, says Team Licensing’s Klemm. The figure projected for 1991-92 is $1.2 billion.

Jacoby notes that in 1988, when Magic Johnson T’s was launched, the line had the license to do shirts for just one player (Johnson) and offered only three designs. Johnson wore one of the T-shirts to the downtown parade celebrating the Lakers’ championship in 1989.

“We sold 120,000 shirts in four days,” Jacoby recalls. “The NBA noticed that maybe we knew what we were doing. We got a full NBA license (to market shirts for any NBA team and player) in 1989. We just about quadrupled our business the first year to the second year. It certainly made it easier for us to get the other licenses. Earvin was also instrumental in helping us get the other licenses.”

He’s also picky about how business is conducted. Jacoby remembers that the second year the company sold its wares at a big trade show, Johnson pulled him aside and suggested that he needed “to upgrade the sales representatives. He said he’d been in some stores and hadn’t seen our products.

“I said to him that we were the seventh-leading licensee of NBA (apparel) products. He said: ‘You know where I like to be. I like to be here.’ He held his hand way over his head. It set a tone.”

Jacoby isn’t sure of just where Magic Johnson T’s now ranks; neither is Klemm, who explains that current rankings specify only which firms are in the top 10. For NBA apparel, Magic Johnson T’s is in that category.

In coming months, the company plans to offer shirts that change color with shifts in body temperature.

And after that? Might Johnson, the reluctant style-setter, expand into other areas?

“Maybe,” he says. “We’re trying to research what’s selling. In this industry, things go up and down so fast. I have to research it more before I can tell you I’m going to get into this or that.”