Name brand

In a hotel suite near Central Park recently, Queen Latifah spent her day talking about bras.

Why bras?

“Why not?” she responded, waxing on about her new Curvation line of full-figure lingerie for Wal-Mart. “It’s where we start getting dressed.”

Her own experience as an amply endowed woman is what got her thinking about building a better bra. Even a recent breast reduction surgery -- she went from E cups to DDs -- hasn’t made bra shopping that much easier: “I’ve had trouble finding things that didn’t make me look like I was wearing something that a construction guy could use as a harness, or the Coast Guard could use to lift someone out of the ocean.”

A couple of days later, on the set of “Barbershop 2” in Chicago, rapper Eve took a break from filming to chat up her new line of dresses and track suits, Fetish, which will be available this fall in department stores. She said she liked the idea of wearing something she helped design. She chose Fetish because “I wanted a name that was sexy and strong, that caught your ear,” she said. “A lot of people hear it and they say, ‘I want to see what these clothes are about. Are they sexual clothes, or what?’ ”

Celebrity clothing labels are multiplying as fast as California gubernatorial candidates. Mariah Carey, 50 Cent and Gwen Stefani have announced plans for fashion lines. Tween queen Hilary Duff, formerly Disney’s “Lizzie McGuire,” is hoping her forthcoming Stuff clothing line will give billionaire twins (and clothiers) Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen a run for their money. In September, Sears will launch women’s clothing by Lucy Pereda, a Galavision TV star who has been dubbed the “Latina Martha Stewart.”

“It’s a normal next step,” Latifah said, “because we set the fashion trends throughout the year by our style and what we have chosen to wear.”

Industry analyst Marshal Cohen agreed: “Very few celebrities are one-dimensional anymore. It’s all about increasing value and revenue through multimedia exposure.” Last year, Jennifer Lopez’s J. Lo clothing and perfume empire registered sales of $130 million, while P. Diddy’s Sean John line did close to $500 million in retail business.

More like a consultant

Celebrities, of course, aren’t really fashion designers. And much of the merchandise that bears their names is hardly what can be called “fashion”; it’s jeans and track suits and casual dresses, often indistinguishable from one another. After they ink the deals with apparel manufacturers, stars have varying degrees of involvement.

“I design all of the lingerie personally,” said Latifah, in a stern Matron “Mama” Morton voice. Pause. “I’m lying,” she said, and erupted into a throaty laugh.

“I don’t sketch,” said Eve, “but I do look at everything from my team of designers. They send me line sheets wherever I am, and I approve or disapprove. I change colors or ask for zippers to be taken off.”

Rapper and “Law & Order: SVU” detective Ice-T said he has “100% approval” on his IceWear department store line of jerseys and jeans. What makes IceWear different from Rocawear by Jay-Z and Damon Dash, or Eminem’s Shady Limited?

“Nothing,” he said Thursday from his home in New York City. “It’s just my style. What separates Hugo Boss from Valentino?”

Idol worship aside, shoppers may be drawn to celebrity labels because so much of today’s fashion is uninspiring. (It’s difficult to get excited about choosing between one pair of distressed cargo pants and another pair in a slightly darker green.) “Going shopping is like stumbling into an overcrowded forest,” said David Wolfe, a creative director at the Doneger Group, a fashion trend consulting and forecasting firm in New York City. “We are all searching for an identity for ourselves, and it’s so much easier to hitchhike on a celebrity’s identity. If every celebrity had a clothing line, we could all find something to buy.”

In the 1990s, fashion was driven by designers who were celebrities in their own right -- Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Karl Lagerfeld. “But people today are immune to designer names,” Wolfe said. “The designers themselves messed things up by diffusing their own names. Pierre Cardin for example, we should all be so rich, but his name no longer means anything.”

Celebrities have cachet -- so much so that in recent years they have replaced models (remember supermodels?) on the covers of most fashion magazines. “Generation X and Y have grown up with music, movies and fashion all interrelating as one in their lifestyle,” said Denise Seegal, president and chief executive officer of Lopez’s 2-year-old Sweetface Fashion Co. “As a result, celebrity branding is the new status for fashion apparel.”

Wolfe thinks the trend will grow. “Eventually, consumers are going to stop paying attention to all the other brands in stores,” he said. “As long as celebrities have exposure in the media, and there’s no end to that in sight, I can imagine a day when every brand out there will have a celebrity name attached to it.”

(Even Michael Jackson has a line of suits and jackets in the works in Japan -- the only place anyone still cares about him, quipped one fashion insider.)

Celebrity fashion lines are alluring to stores because they have instant name recognition, and they come with the possibility of exclusive launches and personal appearances. But buyers don’t jump on every star-studded bandwagon. “Quality, value and fashion come first,” said Kal Ruttenstein, fashion director of Bloomingdale’s, where P. Diddy’s Sean John line launched in 1999. “If those aren’t there, the name means nothing.” Ruttenstein said he may be interested in Stefani’s line, but has passed on Eve’s. “We don’t think it’s quite right for us.” Bloomingdale’s does not carry the J. Lo line either.

The symbiotic relationship that stars have developed with high-profile fashion designers over the years -- wear my gown to the Oscars, I won’t make you pay for it -- probably won’t be adversely affected by stars infringing on designers’ turf. After all, J. Lo can’t exactly strut down the red carpet in a track suit. And why would she want to when she can get a Gucci gown for free?

“Maybe at the MTV awards you’ll see Gwen Stefani stepping out in her creation, instead of a John Galliano gown,” said Elycia Rubin, talent and style director for E! Networks. “But for the majors, you’ll still see YSL, Dior, etc.”

In any case, a new kind of symbiosis may be developing. Rather than appear in advertisements for her own clothing line, Lopez is the face of Louis Vuitton’s fall ad campaign. “It’s image manipulation to a great degree,” Wolfe said. “Because the prestige of Louis Vuitton will spill over to her own line, which has no prestige.”

Strong competition

Despite their apparent loyalty to high fashion (and all its perks), celebrities are making some civilian designers a wee bit nervous. “It makes me realize that I have to brand myself harder, maybe do more TV,” said Bradley Bayou, the recently appointed head designer at Halston, which is known for red carpet dresses. “I’m a couture designer, and I don’t think you’ll see the celebrity group designing couture, but when we do jeans or handbags, it will be head-on competition.”

What a strange twist it would be if Lopez, Queen Latifah and the like cornered the market on jeans, handbags and other affordable merchandise -- the stuff of licensing deals that keeps real designers financially afloat -- and celebrities actually had to start paying for clothes. In the meantime, Wolfe suggests Bayou and other designers could take a few cues from their Hollywood counterparts.

Tom Ford, Donatella Versace and Karan are close to being celebrities on the scale of entertainers Lopez and P. Diddy, he said. “But we want more access to their private lives. So many male designers are gay, so we are not interested in their romances, and most female designers are married. What Donna Karan should do is get a 15-year-old rock star boyfriend.”

Paging Ashton Kutcher.

As pervasive as celebrity clothing licensing is today, it is not new. Some say it began in the 1930s with the Hollywood studio system. “There were a lot of [sewing] patterns that were available at the time that stars such as Claudette Colbert gave their approval to,” said Kevin Jones, museum collections manager at L.A.’s Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. “If it was a dress that the star approved of, they would put that star’s photo on the pattern packet. And the studio would get a kickback.”

Others cite athletes as the trendsetters, beginning with golfer Arnold Palmer, who licensed his name for the first time in 1960, and today has more than 100 licensing and endorsement deals in more than 30 countries.

But the true celebrity fashion innovators are probably hip-hop artists and record producers such as Russell Simmons and Master P, who launched their own clothing brands in the early 1990s. Their brands may have targeted urban black youth, but before long, they had made it to every small town on the map, and spawned a lot of imitators.

For a label to succeed beyond a couple of seasons though, it must transcend the personality behind it and reach a wider audience, said Jeffrey Tweedy, executive vice president of Sean John Corp. “A celebrity name means you have a fan base, so your fan base is going to buy your product right out of the box,” he said. “But you also need a vision, because that fan eventually grows up, or moves on to another celebrity.... Regis Philbin is the perfect example. When he came out with his line a few years ago, every store wanted to launch it,” said Tweedy. “And eight months later, where did it go?” (Philbin, for those who have forgotten, launched a monochromatic line of dress shirts and ties on the coattails of his “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” success.)

“It doesn’t matter if you are a marquis name,” said Latifah. “That can be tough too, because as soon as your record plays out, your line may play out. There is a lot of pressure on entertainers starting clothing lines. They have to outlast all the trends, including themselves.”