Where free spirits rule the runway
There isn’t anything remotely fashionable about this stretch of Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood, where car dealerships, auto body repair shops and fast-food joints sit cheek by jowl, baking in the sun. But duck down the 5600 block of Elmer Avenue, through the rusted metal gate, past the treehouse and broken-down school bus, and you’ll find clothes so fresh the paint hasn’t even dried yet.
Welcome to “the Compound,” the ramshackle home of Elmer Ave, a fledgling line of men’s formalwear-meets-skate wear that may just be the most exciting thing happening at Los Angeles Fashion Week. It’s part Left Coast commune circa 1970 (the designers and various ragtag others actually live on the premises), part Trovata-like design collective. And it has all the high-low cool of Libertine and Morphine Generation, with the rock- and goth-influenced screen-printed graphics to match. Call it Savile Row for Sid Vicious. And now Elmer Ave is making its Smashbox runway debut on Wednesday night.
In the three years since the collective of four twenty- and thirtysomething designers -- Jonny Day, Collin Pulsipher, Ward Robinson and Sean Murphy -- launched a custom line of desconstructed, reworked and hand-painted vintage blazers, Elmer Ave has won Gen Art’s Fresh Faces of Fashion award for menswear, had its striped jackets and screened tees turn up on actresses in several episodes of “The L Word,” and earned the boys a guest designer cameo on “America’s Next Top Model.”
Of course, they’ve been discovered by Hollywood, too. Customers include Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee, the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am, Dave Navarro and actor Orlando Bloom, and just last month, Panic at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie chose a signature fat-stripe Elmer Ave jacket for his walk down the Grammy Awards’ red carpet. On a recent rainy Saturday, a stylist riffling through the racks at the Compound is pulling clothes for a new Def Leppard video.
Elmer Ave’s brand of renegade formalwear began out of necessity. Pulsipher, a former pro skateboarder, met Murphy and Day when they asked him to promote their Afroman skateboard apparel line. Then the three also formed a rock band, Numchuck, and needed to gin up matching jackets.
“If you have to get five matching jackets for your band, you need to figure out how to make them,” he said, explaining he was inspired to create the line’s signature wide stripes after seeing a similar jacket on the cover of Sportswear International. Robinson joined the group later, after helping stage the line’s first fashion show.
Until a year ago, Elmer Ave consisted of only custom reconstructed jackets, shirts and vests. And its renegade formalwear came with a steep price tag: jackets start at $1,200. Though they proved a hit with celebrities and rockers, it limited the line’s appeal. Now the group produces a broader line from scratch, making more pieces and selling at lower prices.
“A lot of people feel we’re not wearable; they think maybe we’re a little loud for them and the production line is wearable for a much larger crowd,” says Day. The T-shirts start at $75, button-fronts at $175, vests at $200 and jackets at $450.
Going “mass” has taken a toll -- one that’s reflected in their most recent collection, which Day calls “full of hope and despair.” It is a brooding assortment of slim-fitting goth/English schoolboy blazers in purple velvet and emblazoned with crossed battle axes, vests with crosses and Union Jack-like designs and tuxedo jackets sporting handgun designs on the front and a broken heart with a bullet hole through it on the back.
“If you put Robert Smith of the Cure on a rusty pirate ship with a leaky ceiling and no lights and he was freezing and crying -- that’s basically what this is,” Robinson says.
“What put our clothing line in a dark place? Being a clothing line.”
The boys are adamant that the line’s production stay in Los Angeles and that they personally do all the screen-printing and spray-painting of the various and sundry skulls, street signs and flags. “There’s something subtle about applying just the right amount of pressure when you pull the screen,” Day says. “And we can’t explain that.”
The shirts, jackets and vests are sent in pieces to the Compound, where they are painted and detailed, and custom hardware such as buttons and crest pendants are added. Then the pieces are shipped out for final assembly. Day says a tin-roofed shed was built so they could finish a season.
He walks deeper into the Compound, past an enormous truck tire that anchors the conversation pit (“Where we talk about all our design ideas”), past the beat-up Blue Bird school bus with a futon on the floor (“The guy who lives there with his girlfriend builds motorcycles”), down a narrow walkway between a laundry room and a splintering skateboard ramp framed with the weathered carcasses of broken skateboards. “Someone used to live under the skate ramp for a while,” Day says. “He was a small guy. But he’s not there any more.”
He stops at another open-air work space filled with screen-printing equipment and a paint dryer that looks like a Quizno’s conveyor-belt sandwich toaster. A darkroom is up a rickety ladder. “When we get done running a design on the line we’ll see if anybody else wants it on their clothes. Like the skull and crossbones on Murph’s shirt today. A lot of our production line starts that way.”
Much of the line -- from the slim-cuts to the way the paint catches the light -- has been influenced by the group’s experience as rock musicians (Day, Murphy and Pulsipher are in Numchuck, and Pulsipher and Robinson are in a band called Royal Heist). “The short-sleeve, short-tailed tuxedo shirt came directly from playing in a band,” says Pulsipher.
“I used to cut the bottoms off my shirts so that it would look tucked in but wouldn’t poof out when I’m moving around.”
The guys admit they’ve spent the bulk of the last four years focusing on all these details -- from the paint viscosity to the Elmer Avenue street sign graphic that serves as the brand logo, and haven’t been as focused on the business end. That’s why Elmer Ave is sold in such odd, far-flung places as Bill Hallman Boutique in Atlanta, Bonnie & Clyde’s in Chicago and Leo in Miami Beach.
“We’re creative types,” Day says, again with a shrug.
Oh, and the same week they show at Smashbox, they’re scheduled to meet with buyers from Saks Fifth Avenue. “It just sort of happened organically,” Day says, shrugging his shoulders again.
In the meantime, they’re selling through their website, elmerave.com, directly from their North Hollywood Compound, just off the Hollywood Freeway, down Burbank Boulevard, just past the Elmer Avenue street sign.
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