‘IT MAKES PEOPLE FEEL SO GOOD’ : The backers of the San Francisco Clothing Bank put their surplus stock into one simple idea: A fresh shirt or a new dress can make a big difference to scores of people in need.

It’s hardly Bullock’s or Bloomingdale’s. Above the industrial shelves and metal racks, crude signs point to an ever-changing selection of T-shirts, maternity and baby clothes, underwear, jackets, jeans, pants, shorts, vests, dresses, skirts, sweaters and sweats.

Decor in this warehouse on the industrial side of San Francisco is limited to a tired Union Jack, an autographed 1943 skirt and chicken-wire dividers covered with fuzzy, hot-pink fabric. The temperature frequently dips to 40.

But no one seems to care. Since its inception in 1987, the San Francisco Clothing Bank has radiated its own warmth.

Founded on the belief that new clothing can spark self-esteem and employment opportunities, the bank solicits donations from manufacturers, then distributes the bounty to agencies serving the homeless and the needy in Northern California.

One of the recipients is Sister Jeannette Paris, a minister with the Unveiled Christ Ministry. Two or three times a week, Paris loads her car with clothing from the bank and heads “wherever someone needs help” on the streets or under the bridges of San Jose.

Before the bank came along, Paris handed out used clothing. Now it’s all fresh from scores of companies, including the heavy-duty donors: Koret of California, Levi Strauss and Jockey International.

“It makes the people feel so good,” she says. “I’ve seen men put on their new shirts in the street, go into a service station, wash up, and you would think they had a million dollars. They can’t thank you enough. They reach out, grab your hand and ask: ‘Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you giving us secondhand clothing? We’re secondhand people.’ ”

Paris says she knows “for a fact the clothing has changed the lives of several people. They have gotten good jobs because someone gave them a break. Someone didn’t look down on them as dirty people.”

In a Daly City schoolroom known as John’s Closet, Irene Papan sees needy children transformed by new clothing from the bank.

Even though the charitable organization founded by Papan and her husband, Louis, a former state assemblyman, receives damaged goods directly from the Gap and pays for other merchandise, Papan says there are costly items like Levi’s that “we can’t get wholesale and we can’t afford to buy retail.”

“I swear they are taller when they leave,” she notes of the children, ages 4 to 17, who may choose two outfits each visit.

Papan vividly recalls one 7-year-old girl.

“She put on a beautiful blue princess-line dress from the clothing bank. Her brother was standing and watching. He didn’t say a word but his eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped open, and I’m sure it was the first time he looked at her as a pretty girl.”

The bank does more than dress the needy. For manufacturers that don’t want to be saddled with decision-making and details, it takes the Angst out of giving.

“When I first came to this job, my predecessor had two huge file folders of requests from individual agencies for product donations,” says Lynne Sonenberg, community affairs coordinator for San Francisco-based Levi Strauss.

“I don’t know how she could say ‘yes’ to some and ‘no’ to others. It was the most horrible thing,” she says. “My dream came true when they developed this clothing bank.

“They became wonderful partners in fairly and broadly distributing goods, which is a great service to us.”

No one discusses the bank without mentioning its three unpaid titans: Mervin Brown, Randall Harris and Steve Fisher.

Fisher, the bank’s vice president of operations, is facilities manager for Episcopal Community Services and a true insider. He was homeless once, after losing a job in the apparel industry.

Brown, president of the bank, is vice president of marketing and advertising for Koret of California. Harris, the very visible executive director, is also executive director of San Francisco Fashion Industries, an apparel industry trade association.

In 1987, faced with the numbers--thousands of homeless in the Bay Area and a $5-billion apparel industry--Brown and Harris decided to devise a game plan.

“We knew we had surplus merchandise and we knew we needed to find a way to distribute it,” says Harris.

The way became clear after manufacturer Larry Rothschild returned from the East Coast with an article about the New York Clothing Bank, the first such bank in the country. (Today, there are also banks in Providence, R.I., Atlanta and Boston.)

Unlike New York’s bank, which is affiliated with the Mayor’s Voluntary Action Center, the San Francisco operation is the apparel industry’s baby and runs without any city, state or federal funds. Cash contributions and proceeds from an annual charity sale, organized by students of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, buy socks, diapers and other rarely donated goods.

Most of the work is done by volunteers, and the original 1,000-square-foot warehouse space “was borrowed from a friend,” Harris says. The present 18,000-square-foot space is rented--at two cents a square foot--from the San Francisco Port Commission.

As its space has increased, so have demands on the bank. In 1991, it provided $3.2 million (at manufacturers’ suggested retail prices) in new clothing to 45,000 people through 85 agencies and shelters in Northern California. Yet, there is never enough to go around, especially for men.

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San Francisco social worker Veronica Bell says giving the children in her care a bath and a bag of new clothes is “the highlight of my job.”

“They have the biggest smiles on their faces. When you see that, it makes everything worthwhile.”

She originally asked for only children’s garments and diapers. Now she gets nearly everything she needs to clothe entire families. And to show her gratitude, she works six to eight hours a week as a volunteer.

“I feel a little bit needs to be given back,” says Bell, who has never forgotten the early response from Harris and Fisher. “They were really sweet, almost like guardian angels. Their hearts went out to the kids.”

But these days, hearts have to be held in check. “We’ve become much more professional in our distribution,” says Harris. “We used to open up the warehouse to agencies and pretty much let them take what they wanted.”

Stanford University put an end to that. Under ACT, its Alumni Consulting Team program, eight business school graduates “turned us inside out for about six months,” Harris says. “We got an ‘A,’ but they had recommendations on how we could professionalize the program.”

Although it might have hired an executive director, the all-volunteer board decided to employ a warehouse manager instead.

Last year, Stratos Melas took over. Working with students from the Fashion Institute, he spent nearly two months setting the disheveled warehouse in order. And decorating it with odds and ends he discovered in the process, like the Union Jack, the skirt “autographed by Mrs. Koret,” the chicken-wire fences and the fuzzy pink material.

Melas can be serious, saying: “You can feel the reality of life here. You hear so many stories of how people suffer.” And he can be humorous. When he discovered bikini and G-string briefs for men in a load from Jockey, he decided they were inappropriate for distribution. So he gave them a permanent display area, labeling the underwear “Sexy” and “Super Sexy.”

Among his dedicated volunteers are 11 women, affectionately known as “Stratos’ wives,” who sort out the shipments every Monday. It is physically demanding work and “sometimes we are standing on our feet from 10 to 4,” says Fannie Chinn. But the rewards are fun, laughter and a sense of pride.

“We feel we’re doing something good for someone,” Chinn says. “There are so many homeless, and these are really nice things. Known brands.”

New, name-brand clothing means the homeless and the needy have a better shot at finding work. At the Episcopal Sanctuary, job applicants choose interview outfits from an array of dresses, blouses, skirts, blazers, pants, even three-piece suits for men--all stored in the Dress for Success Clothing Room.

“(Clothing bank donations) make my job a lot easier,” says deForest Walker , manager of the Sanctuary’s employment counseling department. “The common reaction is how pleased the clients feel about themselves--and how relieved they are that they are going to have something appropriate to wear.”

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Suzanne Davis, founder and co-chairman of the New York Clothing Bank, hopes the idea spreads.

“We always encourage people when we get inquiries, and we were very pleased when San Francisco set up a similar operation. It’s a perfectly simple concept--and how wonderful to be translated in other cities.”

Although Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest apparel manufacturing center, is “a logical place” for a bank, Davis believes she knows why the city doesn’t have one.

“It always takes someone with time and energy to make it work. A lot of people don’t think of it, which is why it doesn’t exist in L.A. We thought of it and put a shape to it. And we made it easy for people.”

Many Los Angeles manufacturers that donate surplus merchandise say they don’t need a centralized agency.

But Davis argues that a bank enables clothing manufacturers to reach more people in a more equitable way. “The problem with doing it on their own is they might have one or two pet agencies, which is OK. But this way, we spread the resources around better.”