BY DESIGN : Fashion’s New...

The Swell Store is half clothing store, half art gallery. On La Brea Avenue across the street from Anna Sui and one block south of Stussy Union, it seems to split the difference between those shops style-wise as well, with equal parts street clothes and high camp.

Joel Fitzpatrick, 27, designs most of the clothes the store carries, under the Pleasure Swell label. A sculptor by training, Fitzpatrick took the fashion plunge when he printed up some anti-George Bush T-shirts in 1992. Ten thousand shirts later, he was in the business. He made the down payment on store rent with one particularly lucky night in Las Vegas.

Everything in the store is trendy and funny, with a technology-meets-nostalgia twist--high-tech fabrics and ‘50s shapes. Most dresses and sportswear items for women are well under $100; men’s pants, shirts and jackets are under $160.

“Because I don’t come from a garment background, I just do what I like,” Fitzpatrick says. What he likes is Kramer-inspired textured acrylic knit shirts, flannel pants with huge pockets (“because men’s pockets are their purses”) and baggy plaid pants with Scotchgard. “They’re fierce. You have to wear a white T-shirt to calm them down,” he says. Regarding the female side of the store, Fitzpatrick claims to be “reinventing a vernacular men’s tradition for women.” That means a ‘60s-style shirt is lengthened into a dress, as is an old-man-style golf shirt.

“It’s like a ‘50s housemom gone awry,” he says. Sports-oriented striped separates and mod graphic dresses are odes to Emma Peel and Raquel Welch in her roller-skating days, he says. Pleasure Swell is also sold at Na Na, all locations.