All Tied Up : Skins Designs Is Way Ahead of Game With Hand-Painted Neckwear Featuring Abstract Doodles and Vivid Colors

Wearing a necktie by Skins Designs is like sporting a skinny painting.

On these narrow swatches of silk, designers Karen Castleman and Maritza Perri of Diamond Bar hand-paint swirling circles, geometric shapes and abstract doodles in a blend of vivid colors that probably shouldn’t go together but do anyway.

“A man’s tie is his first impression,” Castleman says. “These ties say you’re unique, progressive, confident.”

They’re a long way from the traditional paisleys and diagonal stripes.

“They’ll enhance a man’s wardrobe, flatter his coloring and hopefully give him some personality,” Castleman says.

Their neckties are anything but boring. Like Rorschach tests, each design is open to interpretation. They all have names that suggest how Castleman and Perri see their creations.

“For the tie we call ‘Flower,’ that’s very much to us a flower. But that doesn’t mean you won’t see something else,” Castleman says.

“Jelly Beans” has multicolored beans spilled down the length of the tie. “Marble Cake” features abstract swirls that could be leaves or frosting. “Outlet” is covered with rectangular shapes that resemble electrical outlets. “Vertigo” has a dizzying sequence of spiraling squares, and “Star” features a bold yellow star with a streak of blue against a dark red background.

Their contemporary designs are finding favor with men who have cast off power ties and corporate uniforms. The pair sold a dozen of their ties at a recent trunk show at Nordstrom in Brea--a sign that more men are willing to try avant-garde garb. Style-conscious talk show host Arsenio Hall owns a few Skins.

“Men are starting to enjoy getting dressed. We’re getting out of the drabs,” Castleman says. “Now it’s OK to not dress like everyone else. They can express themselves a little bit.”

Castleman and Perri work in a studio crowded with brushes, dyes and fine white silks stretched like an artist’s canvas across wooden frames.

They paint each tie free-hand with a brush, so no two are alike. If they decide to repeat a design, they’ll do it in different colors, not worrying if it doesn’t turn out exactly like the original.

“We’ll see a line we didn’t mean to put there and turn it into some wonderful new design,” Perri says.

No design has been repeated more than 12 times, and often it’s done only once or twice.

“We get bored easily,” Castleman says. As soon as they’re finished with one design, they forget about it and move on.

The pair work so closely they can’t tell who created which design. They’ll pass a sketch pad back and forth, trading ideas and offering suggestions until they arrive at a design they both like. They never follow trends or look at other ties on the market.

“It would be distracting,” Perri says. “We’re not motivated by fashion. We have our own style.”

Adds Castleman: “There’s not a concern about what everyone else is doing. If it’s out there already, we don’t need to do it.”

She pulls out a yellow legal pad with doodles of tie designs she made while talking to a friend on the telephone.

“We don’t think too much about what we’re doing,” Castleman says. “It’s coming from the heart.”

That changes when it comes to picking fabrics and dyes.

The pair choose their silk with care, working with a textured Jacquard or crepe that best enhances their designs.

“We’ll think very seriously about which silk we’ll use. A lot of designers just use crepe,” Perri says. Thus a swirling Jacquard complements the rotating squares in the “Vertigo” tie.

To achieve their ties’ brilliant colors, the designers use “hard-to-come-by dyes from France” and custom blend them to make unusual shades, says Castleman. “Our colors are very different. They’re not primary colors by the time we get done with them.”

They prefer designs that have contrasting colors. “Marble Cake” comes in an uncommon blend of lime, teal and gold with a touch of cranberry.

“If you told someone you put those colors together they’d think you were crazy,” Castleman says.

Castleman and Perri began making ties two years ago, after a brief venture into bedding. The two have a mutual love of design: Castleman, 32, once worked as an architect and Perri, 28, studied interior design. They first created hand-dyed batik print sheets and pillow cases but found linens were too cumbersome for the kind of detailed hand-painted work they wanted to design.

“It was a lot of labor for one sheet,” Castleman says. “Production was not the word of the day.”

One night they were watching television and noticed the announcer was wearing a boring tie.

“I thought, ‘Can’t he do something exciting with that? Does your tie have to look like a table cloth?’ ” Castleman says. “That’s when we said, ‘Let’s try doing a tie.’ ”

They switched from heavy bolts of cotton to lighter rolls of silk.

“We went from lifting bricks to feathers. And the results were faster. We were having so much fun and there was so much flexibility,” Castleman says.

They now make 60 to 80 dozen ties a month.

“It’s getting to the point where we can hardly keep up with it,” Castleman says.

Skins Designs are sold at Fred Segal and Maxfield’s on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

The ties are selling for $65 and up.

“Women wear them too, with baggy shirts over tights,” Castleman says.

The pair may eventually add a line of ties with printed designs to keep up with the demand, but they’ll never give up their paintbrushes.

“To us, sitting around painting is the enjoyment,” Perri says.