THE BUZZ BABIES

FOR the last 10 years, Gen Art has been spotlighting the most innovative fashion design coming out of Los Angeles, often to the surprise of the city itself, which didn’t have its own Fashion Week until 2002. Louis Verdad, Katy Rodriguez, Jared Gold and Ashley Paige all staged their first shows for Gen Art, and on Friday, another 12 L.A. designers will join the list with this year’s event at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The L.A. show is one of five Fresh Faces in Fashion events Gen Art puts on around the country -- shows that are known for their refreshing departures from the status quo. Two of those showing this week in L.A. -- Melissa Coker of Wren and David Hershberger of Endovanera -- have already generated considerable buzz. Although they spring from very different worlds, Wren and Endovanera share a youthful spirit, a commitment to fine craftsmanship and materials, and a flair for drama that falls just a shade on the dark side.

The goth hero

“What kind of character do I want to be today? That’s how I try to look at it,” says David Hershberger, sipping an Americano at his local coffee shop in Echo Park. “If people have to get up and go to work and they can put on some severe jacket that makes them feel like a superhero from another time and land, that’s pretty cool.”

Only 25, the Huntington Beach native is causing a stir with his menswear line Endovanera, whose finely tailored, subtly tweaked styles are carried by such trendsetting boutiques as Opening Ceremony and Scout, as well as stores in New York, Chicago, Tokyo and other select cities. This week the 2-year-old line will make its runway debut at Gen Art’s Fresh Faces, modeled by Hershberger’s skinny artist friends to mitigate what he calls “the cheese factor” of L.A. fashion, which prefers its male models pumped up.

Dramatic and Euro-leaning in its sensibility, Endovanera is not for the average Hollywood exec (although the E character on “Entourage” has sported the line). Hershberger, whose slender frame and long dark hair are more fitting for a 19th century Byronic hero, is his own best advertisement -- wearing cropped black trousers that bag in the seat and button snugly down the calf, with a long rayon tank and a black hooded jacket that nods to his fixation with Jedis and ninjas.

“I fight for the big hoods every season,” Hershberger says, laughing. He cites Ann Demeulemeester and Hedi Slimane as his biggest influences and calls business partner Mitch Mosely, also from Orange County, the backbone of the line. “I can make the clothes, but that’s it.”

As a child, Hershberger would enlist his mother to sew capes and hoods onto his T-shirts, pinning the pieces for her when she didn’t understand what he was getting at. She drew the line at her son’s cholo phase, however, telling him he’d have to hem his own pants if he wanted them 7 inches too long. “That’s when I learned how to work the sewing machine,” he says.

Hershberger’s lack of formal fashion training allowed him to make bold moves such as cutting back the bottom of a coat for a silhouette that’s fuller in the chest, or slicing a sweater sleeve in two and reattaching it with a single button, a look he approvingly calls “ghoulish.” It’s also made him open to learning about fashion wherever he can, be it a technical tip from a pattern maker, a suggestion from a buyer or a stint honing his cutting skills at Work Custom Jeans in Echo Park.

This fall will see the launch of Endovanera for Ron Herman jeans, which Hershberger created with the store’s denim buyer Brian Kaneda, as well as some collaborative pieces he did with Scout. And he’s recently taken on a new gig, doing custom tailoring for musician Jack White, whose “Southern gentleman” aesthetic is perfectly suited to Endovanera’s more formal frock coats and dress shirts.

“If I had it my way,” Hershberger says, “everyone would live everyday life in dress clothes, with capes and cloaks.”

The new Victorian

Luckily for Melissa Coker, she knew where to find a Napoleon hat when André Leon Talley needed one. The Vogue editor, then her boss, was presenting an award on television, and when Coker procured the perfect capper she found herself with a new BFF -- and a fashion front-row seat.

“I was 21 and going to couture shows,” recalls the 29-year-old designer of the new women’s-wear line Wren. “At the time I was very unfazed, but that’s pretty exciting!”

Coker’s career unfolded in a similarly charmed way: Vogue led to three years as an editor at Details (styling for Tokion and Nylon on the side), and then she was recruited by Abercrombie and Fitch as a trend forecaster, which involved traveling all over the world -- Japan, Brazil, Europe, South Africa -- while “having tons of fun and doing lots of shopping.”

An offer to work as a designer for Old Navy in San Francisco materialized just as Coker tired of traveling. At Old Navy she learned design techniques and construction, which she then took with her to Forever 21, a job that brought her back to Los Angeles, where she’d bought an apartment during the Abercrombie days.

Wren is named for Jenny Wren, a 12-year-old doll dressmaker in a Dickens novel (and also a favorite bird of Coker’s grandmother). And it started, as so many lines do, with Coker making clothes for herself. The flirty silk frocks and mod little coats and jackets, she says, were the “natural culmination of a lifetime of ideas.”

When Coker left Forever 21 earlier this year to pursue Wren professionally, her holiday collection was immediately picked up by Humberto Leon and Carol Lee, old friends from New York who own the Opening Ceremony boutiques there and in L.A. “If it weren’t for them this wouldn’t have happened at all,” says Coker, who notes with pride that a short, cinch-waisted silk broadcloth skirt sold out immediately.

The skirt also points toward Coker’s Spring ’08 collection and its unlikely melding of Victorian silhouettes with L.A. cool. The line began with a visit to a recent LACMA show of Southern California art of the ‘60s and ‘70s. “To me,” says Coker, a native of Lake Forest, Ill., “the California lifestyle has all these utopian aspects that are really appealing -- the culture of sunshine and gold, optimism and color.”

Coker married a palette splashed with bold orange, yellow, and blue with Victorian details such as pin tucks, pleated bodices and lace trim. The collection also plays with textures; a black silk pique jacket with a scalloped lace interior detail is a favorite piece, and coral necklaces strung from ribbon are hand-painted in shades of lavender, cornflower blue and goldenrod that’s meant to wear off and reveal the natural coral underneath. The full skirt appears in several variations (including a hemp-silk blend and a gold brocade), yet while its high waist may say “Gibson girl,” the mid-thigh length is pure go-go.

“It’s not very Victorian at all,” Coker says with a coy grin, admitting that she wears it almost every day. Sounds like Granny’s getting ready to take another trip.

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BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Preview See pieces David Hershberger and Melissa Coker will present at Friday’s Gen Art show at latimes.com/image.

Video Look for a 10-year Gen Art retrospective on Tuesday and then catch video of this year’s event Oct. 15 at latimes.com/image.

Tickets Gen Art’s Fresh Faces in Fashion event is 7 to 11 p.m. Friday at the Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Reserved seats, $100 ($90 for members); standing tickets, $40 ($30 for members). For information and tickets, call (323) 782-9367 or visit www.genart.org.