DESIGNERS : After Big Flop, Muroya’s Back in a Flash of Color

You can’t tell Walter Muroya there’s no market for men’s designer sportswear in Southern California.

Since opening his San Diego-based design house, labeled Wallace Muroya (the name on his birth certificate), the handsome, 26-year-old designer of trendy, unconstructed sportswear has been widely praised as the West Coast’s newest star.

Last weekend he picked up the Marty award, given out each year by the California Mart to the designer who shows a new direction in the local menswear scene. And Macy’s in San Francisco selected him to headline its Passport show, an annual event that traditionally spotlights top names like Giorgio Armani, Valentino, Franco Moschino and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Today, three years after using savings to open his company, Muroya sees the apparel industry as a hard-and-fast business, not a secret society.

“I always had an interest in fashion,” says Muroya. “But I studied commercial art in college because I thought there was more of a future in it.”

But he quit college to join a small, now-defunct San Diego clothing company known as KGB, then ventured out on his own in 1988 with a menswear line he laughingly describes as “disco-type.”

“Buyers didn’t like the colors, the fabrics or the prices. Basically, they hated everything,” Muroya says.

So he went back to the drawing board and came out with a second collection of richly textured, unconstructed rayon jackets and coordinating trousers in neon colors, a welcome relief from the “blue, brown and gray” scenario.

“I’ve changed quite a bit,” he says.

“I used to do flashy clothes for nighttime. Now I’m doing more day clothes that have a fashion-forward, loose, comfortable look.”

Muroya believes his customers also like his affordable prices. Sport coats go for less than $260, pants and shirts top out at $85, trench coats average $285 and leather jackets sell for less than $350.

For spring he is showing Ernest Hemingway-inspired, four-button tan linen suits and ombre plaid blouson jackets with lime-green rayon trousers.

His bold look, Muroya says, shatters the price and status barriers of traditional designer sportswear.

To date, the label is featured in almost 60 stores nationwide.