Of culture and commodity
Leah MOSS’ favorite tank top is not just a coverup, thanks to the single word -- “Mamacita” -- printed in 2-inch-high Old English lettering on a white background.
At the very least, it’s a magnet for some unsolicited comments, as Moss discovered on a recent trip to New York. Walking down the street, men did double takes as they called out, “oooh mamacita,” which means “hot mama” in Spanish. But the 27-year-old Studio City real estate agent loves the look of her Rodney Rodriguez tank top, and plans to buy more.
Other women -- Jennifer Lopez, Pink and Christina Aguilera among them -- have discovered Rodriguez and his West L.A.-based company, Vato, Spanish slang for “homeboy.” He started his company a year ago with $500, first giving away his shirts to clubgoers to generate word-of-mouth business. Now Rodriguez, 32, sells his garments in some of L.A.’s hippest shops -- Madison, Fred Segal and Traffic -- as well as stores in New York, Hawaii and Tokyo.
Vato is one of a handful of new cutting-edge brands that are rooted in Latino culture. The bestselling shirt from Teenage Millionaire, a Silver Lake clothing firm run by Doug Williams, 39, and Chris Hoy, 37, reads “Jesus Is My Homeboy,” and features a black-and-white sketch of Christ. It, too, has a celebrity following. Religious images also come into play at the Rojas store on Melrose Avenue, where owner and designer Freddie Rojas, 31, sells a shirt that says, “I {heart}Jesus.”
Vato, Teenage Millionaire and Freddie Rojas have tapped an audience that loves new trends, but exactly what kind of trend is this? Chic street fashion? Cultural appropriation? Or is it just another example of flirting with gang culture from afar?
For Moss it’s a fashion statement that says women are making a connection with the Latino culture.
Others say the increase in sales is more evidence that some of the best fashion trends start on the street. “A white woman from the Westside wearing a gang-banging, stylized T-shirt is almost like a gangbanger wearing Burberry,” says Frances Harder, executive director of Fashion Business Inc., a company that provides training and support to small apparel manufacturers. “It’s the trickling up and trickling down of fashion where every culture intersects. And when that happens, fashion isn’t boring.”
Street savvy
Indeed, big-name designers regularly turn to street fashion for inspiration -- and copy it. John Galliano has offered raver looks: baggy trousers, skull hats, even an exaggerated boombox-like bag. Vivienne Westwood and Jean-Paul Gaultier have channeled the punks of London into various collections. And Domenico Dolce & Stephano Gabbana have always taken their cues from the street with their slashed and safety-pinned, rock ‘n’ roll looks.
It’s an insider-chic kind of thing, “almost culturally subversive in a smart way,” says David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York-based fashion-trend consulting firm.
Sylvia Martinez, editor in chief of New York-based Latina magazine, a publication that covers fashion, beauty and issues of importance to Latinas, finds nothing wrong or offensive with the garments. “If Latinas can wear DKNY or Paul Frank or Asian-decorated T-shirts, then why can’t you have Anglos or, for that matter, every ethnic group walking around with tees that say ‘Chica’? We understand people that want to be as cool as we are, so we say the more the merrier.”
Other observers view this fashion trend of the moment with less enthusiasm.
Denise Sandoval, a Cal State Northridge professor in the Chicana and Chicano Studies department, says it’s become trendy to wear a shirt that says “Latina” or “Authentica,” regardless of one’s ethnic background. But when she wears such a shirt, “it has political meaning because I’m Chicana.”
“What does it mean to be a non-Chicana wearing such a T-shirt? I think it’s just about style. When the style of Chicano culture becomes a commodity, then in that sense it’s about making money, not about teaching us Chicano consciousness or making a cultural connection. It’s about looking pretty or being down with the latest look.”
Rodney Rodriguez, who grew up in L.A.’s mid-city area and attended summer school in East L.A., started Vato after working 13 years in retail. His business is growing -- he’s hired two sales reps -- and these days he’s filling orders for shops as far away as Japan, thanks in part to Jennifer Lopez wearing a Vato shirt that reads “Latina” in a magazine advertisement.
Rodriguez won’t discuss sales figures, but he will talk philosophy. He says his shirts “have a gang twist but are not gang-related. They’re more about an attitude and image.” Recently, he filled a 250-shirt order for actress Lisa Rinna, who gave away the tanks at the opening of her Sherman Oaks store, Belle Gray. “I’m bringing a little part of the Latin community to customers that don’t get to East L.A.”
Freddie Rojas, a West Covina High School graduate, learned how to sew pearls on a wedding gown from his grandmother and how to run a business from his parents, Amparo and Arturo Rojas, who owned an L.A. bridal shop.
In the late 1990s, he designed for the label F-8 and later, Private Clothing. He presented runway shows for each company during New York’s fashion week, and, since 1997, he has always shown his own signature lines during L.A.’s fashion week. His garments are now in more than 200 shops across the U.S. -- and Japan as well -- compared to 20 back in the late ‘90s.
Chris Hoy of Teenage Millionaire, a company he and his partner started three years ago, says they created the “Jesus is My Homeboy” T-shirt while talking one afternoon about his Irish Roman Catholic upbringing in a largely Latino community in Hollywood. But before the “Jesus” T-shirt put them on the fashion map, the duo invested close to $100,000 on a costume rental business and their Teenage Millionaire shop on Melrose. After a year, the shop eventually closed, but their printed words and graphics on vintage T-shirts were sold to Fred Segal.
Still, it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. “We were down to nothing, moneywise,” Hoy says. Then came Teenage Millionaire, the clothing company -- and their Jesus creation. “We wanted an ethnic-looking Jesus -- not the white, blue-eyed Jesus,” he says about the design as well as others that are created in-house and contracted out to an L.A. factory.
The shirt has taken off at Urban Outfitters, where it is one of the chain’s fastest sellers. Hoy and Williams give credit to celebrities wearing them; their images plastered in magazines create buzz for the garment among hipsters. “We now have reps on the East and West coasts getting orders for us,” Hoy says.
Helen Martinez and her husband, Chris Griffin, started San Fernando-based Chica Inc. in 1999. Their Web site sells tops printed with the word “Chica,” which means girl or girlfriend; variations include “Sweet Chica,” “Spicy Chica,” “Soul Chica.” In four years, sales have climbed to about $2 million annually. The shirts sell at Sears, Macy’s, Fred Segal and Torrid, a plus-size women’s wear chain. Martinez says her garments are not linked to gang influences but were created to empower Latinas and non-Latinas as well. “Our focus is about being proud of our ethnic backgrounds,” she says.
But will they last?
But whether pride is enough to keep the shirts going beyond their current must-have appeal, is anyone’s guess.
Kurt Barnard, president and chief economist of Retail Forecasting, an Upper Montclair, N.J., firm specializing in consumer spending patterns and retail trends, doesn’t think the trend will live “beyond a year or two.”
“It’s not something of lasting power,” Barnard says of the shirts that are typically priced from $25 to $40. “It’s a fad that pleases a lot of people at this time. Someone thought of it and did it and it struck a responsive nerve. Eventually, a new fad will come along to take its place,” Barnard says, unless the designers come up with something new to offer.
Rodriguez and his peers know the revolving door of fashion -- even with T-shirts -- must be well-oiled with ideas. Coming soon are more Vato tanks for women as well as a men’s line printed with words such as “Gringo,” “Mafioso” and “Policia.” In the works for Rojas is a “Jesus + Me” shirt and a “Jesus Christ: He’s the Real Thing” trucker hat. Williams and Hoy have just silk-screened another Jesus T-shirt with “El Jefe” on it (or “The Boss” if the wearer prefers).
This current crop of Latino-inspired shirts -- whether they’re about ethnic pride or gang culture -- are out there “because they represent a part of life in a diverse city,” says Ruth Rubinstein, sociologist and author of “Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture,” who teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
And because the wearer simply feels an emotional connection. It could be an embrace of the Latino culture or just simply wanting to wear the newest, latest, coolest thing that nobody else has.
Carl Dias, a buyer for three Traffic stores (Los Angeles, West L.A. and Costa Mesa), says the Vato line has proved to be popular with Latinas, African Americans and Anglos. “White women from Pacific Palisades are wearing them,” he says. Traffic store manager Orit Moldovan says she’s noticed how “white girls like that gangster chola look because they want to look tough or rebellious.” But older women like the shirts for the fit or the word -- “Bonita” (pretty) or “Amor” (love). “They don’t connect with the culture.”
Television producer Carlota Espinosa says she’s out to get a reaction when she wears a Homeboy or Vato shirt.
“You definitely get stared at and I get second and third looks whenever I wear my shirts,” she says. “Nobody has ever said anything. They just stare.” But her mom, who is her best fashion barometer -- and who also is Latina, Catholic and moderately conservative -- had something to say when Espinosa showed up in a “Homeboy” shirt: “Adorable.”
