Multicultural ‘T’ Time
An attractive woman in her 20s walked into Rag Factory, a Santa Monica boutique, and headed straight to a rack of bright multicolored V-neck tops with long sleeves flaring at the wrists. After a series of emphatic gasps and rhetorical questions to a nearby stranger (“How cute is this?”), she snagged three, tagged at about $60 each.
Total time: 14 minutes.
At Traffic in the Beverly Center, singers Sarah McLachlan and LeAnn Rimes snapped up a few of the colorful, fitted tops. Wardrobe stylists from every studio show up for new shipments.
“We actually keep a list of customers who want to know when the new styles arrive,” said women’s buyer Carl Dias. “They sell themselves--we don’t have to do any work.”
Call it Custo fever.
From Los Angeles to Tokyo to Barcelona, Spain, where the 18-year-old label is based, the bold knit tops have become a fashion rage. Less than three years after brothers Custo and David Dalmau introduced the multigraphic, collage tops, the line is sold in more than 40 countries and sales are expected to reach $30 million this year.
Custo Dalmau traces much of the line’s original inspiration to the brothers’ first trip to California in 1980. Custo, who had just finished training as an architect, and David, a recent university grad who studied art, rode along the coast on motorbikes. They fell in love with the look of the Southland’s surfing lifestyle, Northern California’s hippie traditions and the silk-screened T-shirts they saw on everyone, everywhere.
Upon returning to Spain from their worldwide bike tour, the careers they’d trained for no longer interested them.
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Custo Barcelona, the company, was born, first as a full line of men’s and women’s wear. Three years ago with sales of $5 million, they dropped the men’s line because of a soft European men’s market and focused their women’s line entirely on the tops.
The many cultures the brothers have enjoyed during their world travels are celebrated in their designs, making Custo one of the forerunners of fashion’s multicultural movement, now seen everywhere, from purses cut from Indian saris and swimwear printed with Indonesian motifs to Chinese thong sandals and Mexican guayabera shirts.
In addition to the mix and match of textiles, Custo tops juxtapose fabrics of divergent prints. One style features a front panel with a colorful map of Southeast Asia pieced with sleeves cut of a funky Hawaiian floral. A red print of a traditional Chinese landscape spreads across the body of another style paired with raffia sleeves in blue and purple hues.
Oversized images display a chic character in Jackie O sunglasses, a Cuban face with giant hoop earrings and a black woman whose Afro stretches beyond her neckline and shoulders.
Fans refer to them as T-shirts because of their comfort and ease, but the comparison ends there. Cut to flatter, there’s something of the funky goddess in the curvy tops.
Cotton bodies are occasionally slashed with a bar of sparkling net sheer that reveals the midsection. Sleeves are half polyester georgette, half stretch mesh. And the back panel often doesn’t match the print or the fabric of the front.
It’s pure Bohemian chic. The kind of playful, unusual item Jenna Elfman would wear on “Dharma & Greg” and off the set. And thanks to her wardrobe designer, she does.
The brand is a favorite among many wardrobe designers and TV stars, and its appearances on daytime and prime time translates into maximum exposure.
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Other media interest has added to the buzz. In a Chicago Sun-Times story, Lisa Lenoir, an African American reporter, praised the brand’s willingness to flaunt characters of color on its shirts. She gushed about her favorite tops that feature a black mermaid and a woman with an Afro.
Homemaker Debbie Martin, who lives outside Dallas, spotted a Custo top in InStyle magazine. She put in a call to the editor, who helped her connect to the brand’s public relations representative, who directed her to a store. Several calls later, she found the top in her size--in Los Angeles. Fed Ex delivered.
“It’s the individuality of them that I love. That and the colors. I look for things that are different. And they go with everything,” said Martin, who now owns five Custo shirts.
The Dalmau brothers offer 200-some style choices of tops each season. They also are preparing new products--skirts, pants and men’s shirts--for a summer 2000 launch.
“The preferences of the consumer in the U.S. or in Greece or in Singapore are distinct, so we have to make a large collection not just universal in graphics but in age [appeal],” said Custo Dalmau. “We’ve seen the exact shirt on a 16-year-old in Los Angeles and a woman of 50 in Iceland. We love to see that.”
The popularity of the tops in the United States may push America past France and Germany as the company’s biggest export market. Sales at 500 U.S. stores--including Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Savvy in Laguna Niguel and Marie’s in Dana Point--are expected to double to $10 million before the year is out.
All the success has inspired copycats. Knockoffs of the stretchy shirts with Indian and Asian motifs can be found everywhere from trendy Melrose Avenue discounters to designer boutiques.
Deby Buchanan, co-owner of Rag Factory on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and in the Glendale Galleria and South Bay Galleria, was among Custo’s first U.S. accounts three years ago, “before everybody started knocking them off.”
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Despite the competition, she said, it’s one of the few lines in her stores that hasn’t lost its edge.
“People get addicted to it. The fabric is better, the prints are better and the quality is better [than the imitators],” she said. “Lots of the printed shirts you see out now all started with [Custo]. We have customers who come in over and over again and buy out all the new stock right away.”
In California, where casual style was invented, Traffic’s Dias echoes other Custo enthusiasts in explaining the tops’ core attraction. “Basic T-shirts are great and serve a purpose, but every once in a while you want a [totally modern] look while dressed with the same feel of a T-shirt.”
