Express yourself to a T
Rick ELSKY, a fashion-phobic finish carpenter who builds sets and props in Hollywood, is in a T-shirt -- always a plain cotton size XXL with a printed logo -- 360 days a year. But not just any T-shirt.
“If you work for a living as I do, the T-shirts of certain suppliers and vendors are desirable and sought after. There’s a company called Studio Supply -- their shirts are coveted, because they’re hard to get.” Elsky says. “A guy who shows up on the job in one of their shirts definitely knows his stuff.”
Paying for a T-shirt is completely against the rules in Elsky’s universe. But on Melrose Avenue, you can spend $28 on one he might’ve thrown out: a secondhand, bright orange shirt from Home Depot.
It’s desirable for exactly the opposite reasons as those Elsky covets. You can be sure the well-heeled hipster who buys it at World of Vintage, a shop that sells high-priced hand-me-downs, doesn’t want anyone to think he knows his lumber.
The same shirt can mean different things when worn by different people -- and it’s the one ultra-personal wardrobe item by which nearly all of us can be judged. And, as it exists, the T-shirt is one of our main tools for role-playing, dabbling in other identities. If Marie Antoinette lived in L.A., she’d have a closet full of T-shirts.
Juan Miguel Garcia is banking on a generation of urban princes and princesses lining up to purchase his radically altered -- and radically priced -- T-shirts. A transplant from Mexico City, Garcia is a business school grad who opened Barracuda Vestamenta on Melrose just over a year ago. (It’s too cool to have a regular sign. Look for the big metal barracuda over the door.)
The store, which sells high-design T-shirts that can top three figures, was a risky side venture; Garcia earns his bread and butter selling the same items wholesale to Japan. “The Japanese have the guts to wear it first,” Garcia says. He’s counting on the local vogue for high-end T-shirts to reach critical mass any day now. Those trends eventually make it across the Pacific, he says. “For the last two years, T-shirts are huge in Japan.”
The shirts may look casual, but they actually have more handwork in them than most of the tailored clothes at Barneys. Much of Barracuda’s clientele still consists of foreign nationals who don’t think twice about plunking down $100 for a hand-embroidered and carefully scissored limited-edition Rolling Stones concert T-shirt that has, Garcia says, gone through “nine different processes” to achieve the perfect deconstructed look.
L.A. locals gravitate toward his other outlet across the street, Blue Demon, where his girlfriend, Diana Contreras, minds the store. She’s wearing another high-art, museum-piece tee: It reads “Kill ‘em all. Let God sort ‘em out” and has been cut and re-sewn with coarse T-like laces up the back.
The shelves are full of any number of retro shirts, many with Mexican wrestling motifs. (The shop is named after a famous wrestler.) The place is mobbed by a crowd of 13-year-olds down from Santa Barbara. Moving around them, 32-year-old actor Gerard Vernice selects a T-shirt with a retro ‘70s logo on it. “My mission today was to buy a brown T-shirt to go with this really cool brown leather jacket,” he says.
Farther down the road at Industry Rag, you can buy a team logo shirt that once graced the back of a Dodger fan, perhaps, but which has been reincarnated as a bejeweled halter top that only Christina Aguilera would wear to a ballgame. She does shop there, as does Justin Timberlake -- or at least their stylists do. And Madonna was quoted in Cosmo saying an Industry Rag tee was her favorite shirt.
The attraction, owner Steve Yarovinsky says, is that “they want something one-of-a-kind.” As do the Harley riders who come in for similarly sexed-up biker tees -- the ultimate convergence of glam and grunge. Leave it to Angelenos to figure out a way to wear a T-shirt and still be overdressed.
The quest to find the perfect tee -- like any other spiritual journey -- can take you to some unexpected places. The most talked-about T-shirt in town these days comes from a local wholesaler that only recently opened a retail outlet. The American Apparel store, a clean, blindingly white space, is an oasis amid a messy stretch of furniture stores and taco stands in Echo Park.
American Apparel was founded six years ago by Dov Charney to manufacture wholesale T-shirts. Charney is a perfectionist and idealist -- he was profiled in the New Yorker four years ago, where he waxed poetic about achieving the perfect fit -- and the quest to make the perfect shirt has expanded to include an effort to make the perfect company. American Apparel’s slogan is “sweatshop free.” Its catalog includes information on the state-of-the-art, 350,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in downtown L.A.
None of that would matter if the clothes were expensive, or ugly, but they’re neither. They’re basic, clean-cut and reasonably priced; a plain, short-sleeved men’s jersey tee is $15. There’s nothing better than putting on a freshly laundered T-shirt in the morning -- unless it’s putting on a clean T-shirt made by happy workers earning a living wage with benefits that include English classes, healthcare, massage therapy and subsidized bus passes.
The regular shoppers at American Apparel, which has been open only six months, are as devoted to the company’s brand of “next generation capitalism” as they are to its product line.
Leonardo Chalupowicz, who lives nearby in Silver Lake, has come in on a Saturday to exchange a hooded sweatshirt that doesn’t fit. The company’s philosophy drew him in, he says, but it was the quality of the shirts that kept him coming back. “I have seven or eight of them,” he says, fondly stroking the sleeve of a classic blue-and-orange baseball tee, which he ends up buying. It’s $22.
Of course, this is Los Angeles, where with little effort you can find a plain white T-shirt that costs $50. There are plenty of these at the Ron Herman T-shirt shop at Fred Segal, as well as a selection of inexplicably expensive reproduction vintage tanks. There, too, are the most sought-after items among movie stars over 30 this year: the clingy, whispery thin shirts by C&C; California, a company founded by two Angelenas, Claire Stansfield and Cheyann Benedict.
At $50 a pop, the price point is relatively low for a luxury item. But there’s a catch: The style is to layer three or more of them, in different colors and cuts.
Therein may lie the key to the great cultural divide in our city: There are those who accrue their quality T-shirt equity over time, then there are those who buy it off the rack.
Rob Campbell, a 37-year-old art critic who lives in West Hollywood, sniffs at the very idea of the nouveau “vintage” T-shirts.
“The idea of a reproduction shirt with an iron-on picture of Scott Baio on it is just wrong and unnecessary,” Campbell says. He prefers simple white cotton now. Vintage logo T-shirts were his trademark casual wear in his 20s -- but he gave them all away.
He kept only one as a memento, a baby-soft, worn-out relic with an image of Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robots on the chest.
“I don’t wear it,” Campbell says. “I keep it folded up in my desk drawer, and every so often I pull it out and just sort of pet it.”
Hillary Johnson can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.
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Where to find them
Tee Shirt Construction Night
Where: Matrushka Construction, 3528 W. Sunset Blvd.,
Silver Lake
When: Friday, 7-11 p.m.
Cost: $14-$20 per shirt
Info: (323) 665-4513 or www.matrushka.com
T-shirt shops
World of Vintage: 7701 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 651-4058.
Barracuda Vestamenta: 7600 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 653-5603.
Blue Demon: 7625 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 653-5603.
Industry Rag: 7700 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 653-8875.
American Apparel: 2111 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park. (213) 484-6464.
Ron Herman T-Shirt Shop: Fred Segal Melrose, 8100 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 651-4129.
