Edging the Green
Golfers have never been masters of fashion. They are not known for setting style trends. Oh, why sugarcoat it: They dress like nerds.
Plaid pants, lime green shorts, too-tight shirts with stiff collars and engineered stripes that actually hurt the eyes--such is golf’s fashion legacy.
Now, as a growing number of younger, hipper golfers take to the sport, there are signs that golf attire is loosening up.
Bobby Klotz and Dennis Del Rey, co-owners of the Skins Game in Irvine, are two sportswear designers trying to bring golfers up to fashion par. By golf’s traditional (read “stuffy”) standards, the Skins Game’s line of golf clothing is downright radical.
Klotz and Del Rey have taken golf classics and given them a new, edgier look. They’ve put a fresh twist on the traditional golf shirt, using textured fabrics and adding ribbed collar trims. Instead of broad engineered stripes, the shirts come in solids, vintage Hawaiian prints, plaids and micro-stripes.
“We don’t want a guy to feel like, ‘I’m wearing golf clothes,’ ” Del Rey says. “That’s why we emphasize washed and textured fabrics.”
Eye-popping polyesters are nowhere to be found in the line’s golf shorts and pants. Instead, Klotz and Del Rey use fine corduroy and brushed twill in a soft, washed palette of pale greens, blues and heather.
Silhouettes are soft instead of stiff; shorts and pants have double pleating. An underarm gusset in the shirts allows the golfer to execute a full swing without a lot of extra fabric. Some golfers are even wearing the Skins Game shirts untucked (gasp).
Despite their relaxed approach to golf, the designers are careful not to tee off club management, which officially bans tank tops and other too-casual clothes on many greens.
“You can still go right into a country club,” Del Rey says.
When Klotz and Del Rey began showing their line two years ago to buyers for golf shops, the pair were about as welcome as gophers on a green. Buyers, afraid that golfers wouldn’t go for the nontraditional softer styles, stayed away.
“They’d say, ‘This is great, but I don’t know if it will sell,’ ” Klotz says.
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Their lucky break came a year and half ago, when a menswear buyer for Nordstrom in Walnut Creek offered to let the pair hold a trunk show in tandem with a golf promotion and appearance by pro Greg Norman. Young golfers snapped up the Skins Game merchandise.
“They were buying our shirts and having Norman sign them,” Klotz says. “We sold 300 items in one weekend. The buyer thought maybe we had something.”
Nordstrom stores in Orange County picked up the line, followed by the nationwide chain.
The Skins Game gained additional accounts--and credibility--when Klotz and Del Rey showed the line at a PGA merchandising show last year. Buyers for green grass (pro shops at private country clubs) and off-course resort shops visited their booth and placed orders.
“Buyers for a lot of nice shops said, ‘This is where we want to go.’ That gave us more assurance we belonged in green grass,” Del Rey says.
The Skins Game now has more than 300 retail accounts across the country, including Chick’s Sporting Goods and department stores.
The pair’s success contradicts the notion that to manufacture golf attire, one has to know how to golf. Until they started the Skins Game, Del Rey and Klotz seldom went to a golf course. Lately, though, Del Rey has been playing every day, he says, so he can see how the clothes perform on the course.
“He’s obsessed,” Klotz says.
Klotz and Del Rey did know a lot about fashion, particularly sportswear. Both are veterans of mammoth sportswear manufacturer Ocean Pacific. Del Rey, 45, was Op’s vice president of merchandising, and Klotz, 48, was president.
“Ocean Pacific got new owners, and we decided it was time to do something on our own,” Klotz says. “We got together, did a lot of research and saw that golf was exploding among the younger age group.”
The National Golf Foundation estimates that junior golfers ages 12 to 17 grew from 1.4 million in 1987 to 1.9 million in 1994, and that more than half of golfers are ages 18 to 39.
Members of Hootie & the Blowfish and other rock stars have been seen on the links, erasing golf’s image as a stodgy sport. Bud and Coors have made beer commercials centered on young people playing golf.
Del Rey and Klotz say their lack of golfing experience gave them an edge with their young target market.
“What we saw was different--a little more casual and a little more attitude,” Del Rey says. “It’s probably best we didn’t know that much about golf. We ignored what was out there. We didn’t want anything too golfy-looking.”
Their aim is for guys to want to wear the clothes on and off the green. Among their designs that pass for golf and weekend wear: a washed olive-colored cotton pique shirt; pale taupe-colored shorts; coat-front, button-down polos; two-button, Henley-inspired pullover sweaters in charcoal and heather; and relaxed vests of textured cotton in cream or a muted bogey blue.
Details count, such as buttons with finely polished wood or marble finish.
“These buttons look like the wood panels on a Mercedes,” Klotz says.
The Skins Game collection retails for $46 to $56 for the shirts, $46 to $50 for vests, $60 to $70 for sweaters and $44 to $48 for shorts.
Both men design the line, although Klotz is the Skins Game’s “numbers cruncher.”
“Ideas come from everywhere,” Del Rey says. “We shop a lot. We like to look for unique fabrics. We go into antique and clothing stores. We seldom go into golf stores.”
Instead they’ll visit Crate & Barrel or other home furnishing stores for ideas on colors and textures.
The designers named their venture the Skins Game after a golf game in which players bet on who will reach a hole in the fewest strokes. The loser gets skinned of cash. That’s why the hang tag on their clothes is a picture of a $20 bill.
“You can go out any day and hear guys say, ‘Let’s play a skins game,’ ” Del Rey says.
Will the Skins Game lead to more adventurous, sophisticated fashions on the golf course? Klotz and Del Rey are betting on it.
