Enthusiasm can’t be curbed
NAT Nast has, in the last few weeks, appeared on “Friends,” “CSI,” “West Wing” and “The Sopranos.” On a recent “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David and guest star Ted Danson played tug of war with Nast’s sleeves -- yes, like two crazed pit bulls, snarling and rolling on the floor, testosterone at full tilt.
And get this, Nast has been sighted with J. Lo -- and photographed all over Ben Affleck, People magazine’s sexiest man alive. And we do mean all over, because Nat Nast, you see, is a shirt, actually a men’s clothing label, that is riding a wave of popularity on the big screen, in splashy magazine spreads and on the tube.
When Wendy Range-Rao, the costumer for “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” was scouting for a shirt for a subplot of an episode of the HBO show -- a series centered on the absurd situations that David, cast regulars and Hollywood stars who play themselves get into -- she was sold on a $125 long-sleeved, color-blocked Nast silk creation she found at Sy Devore, a men’s shop in Studio City.
“She wanted a great shirt that had presence and was recognizable without being too much of a costume piece, so I showed her a few of the Nast shirts,” says Danny Marsh, a Devore partner who works with several costumers and stylists.
Now, says store owner Marti Devore, “we get calls every day for the ‘Larry David shirt.’ ” Off screen, the Nast shirts have been a hit with her customers since she saw them in a New York trade show three years ago and started carrying them. Devore’s father, Al, and her uncle, Sy, were founding partners in the shop that dressed the style-setting Rat Pack, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop.
And now, the balding and bespectacled Larry David as fashion’s newest trendsetter?
“In our culture, television is the only common denominator, so the appearance of an interesting product as a plot device becomes targeted niche marketing. So, yes, Larry David is the fashion icon of the nanosecond,” says David Wolfe of the Doneger Group, a New York-based firm that analyzes fashion trends. “In my imagination, the average man is standing there stark naked figuring out what to wear. If his wife doesn’t tell him, then his favorite television show or television star can.”
That’s fine by sisters Patty Nast Canton and Barbara Nast Saletan, the duo behind the label that was founded in 1946 in Kansas City, Mo., by their father, Nat Nast -- known as the King of the Bowling Shirts. Nast, a World War II Navy veteran, targeted fans of the popular postwar pastime with shirts that featured inverted pleats on the back that allowed for comfort and movement when hurling a ball.
In 1971, Nast sold his business, which was renamed Swingster and later sold again and is now known as American Identity. Nast died in 1986 of heart failure at age 69. Earlier this year, he was recognized by the trade journal Daily News Record as one of the 12 legends of men’s wear along with Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani.
Three years ago, Nast’s daughters decided to relaunch their dad’s label and introduced their signature silk embroidered and color-blocked shirts, which sell from $95 to $160.
In the “Curb” episode, David obsesses over one of those shirts in cream and black after seeing it in a photograph of a friend’s deceased husband. Where did the dead guy buy the shirt, David repeatedly asks. He has to know because he’s gotta have it. He pushes the widow into recalling the name of the shop and soon buys the shirt for himself, another as a gift for Danson and a third as a replacement should he rip or stain his own.
Ultimately, as the plot develops, the shirts come to a catastrophic end: One is stained with blood after David gets whacked with a bat intended for use on a pinata; another is smeared with makeup, leaving a Tammy Faye-like imprint on the garment from the widow who tearfully collapses into it; and the third, meant for Danson but taken back by David, is pulled apart by the two men.
From Cary Grant’s closet
After the episode in October, the Nast sisters logged more than 100 calls to their Connecticut-based firm from retailers who had customers wanting the shirt; they still get at least 10 to 20 calls a day about it. Specialty shops ranging from Gary’s Island to Fred Segal, as well as department stores such as Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, carry the label.
The Nast collection is growing, and the spring 2003 line includes more vintage-inspired shirts, trousers, waist jackets and sport coats -- and even a snazzy white dinner jacket.
“I’d like to think we are creating a closet for Cary Grant with our clothes,” says Canton, president and head designer for Nast, who will be at Devore’s with her sister Dec. 12 to show the line.
Some shirts are whimsical: One features a winding Route 66 pattern, another is adorned with embroidered cocktail glasses. The one that pops with musical notes is a favorite of Michael Meadows, vice president of television production at New Wave Entertainment in Burbank.
Meadows is a Nast collector. “I have nine of them,” he says, the first purchased more than two years ago at Devore. These days he gets a courtesy call when a shipment arrives at the shop.
“I always look for shirts that are interesting and that have a sense of style and that not everyone else has,” he says, adding that he likes Nast shirts because of the back embroideries and limited editions of each style. “The musical notes shirt is a limited edition, No. 38,” he says. “Every time I wear that one people ask, ‘Who makes that? Where did you get it? I gotta have it.’
“It almost sounds like that Larry David episode.”
