A New Plus for Premium
For Cheyenne Valenzuela, launching her own denim line was as much a result of personal necessity as locating a market niche.
“I’ve always been a size 12 or 14, and it’s always been difficult to find great clothes,” Valenzuela said. “It’s such an underserved market.”
So last month, the Los Angeles-based designer launched C.enne.V, a capsule collection of denim jeans in trendy styles made specifically for women sizes 12 to 24. Valenzuela said she came up with the business plan during her last year of graduate school at the University of Southern California and has a firm strategy in place.
“Right now it’s a denim line, but I’m working on tops and corduroy pants that will be launched in December,” she said.
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Beyond that, Valenzuela’s objectives include getting the collection into stores other than the exclusively plus-size retailers where it is currently sold.
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“We have two main distribution channels right now, with the plus-size stores and through online sales,” she said. “But ultimately, my goal is to be in mainstream boutiques, which only requires acceptance. Some of the more progressive stores know this is a great market, that big girls go in with their small friends, and so they put a variety of sizes in the stores. But it’s still minimal. It’s frustrating because we spend money, and we want to look good, too.”
The collection is available in a handful of stores in Canada, New York, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif. The key difference between Valenzuela’s jeans and other plus-size brands is in the fit. Her styles come in two fits: one that caters to the “apple-shaped” body and the other to the “pear-shaped.”
“I wanted to make clothes for bigger girls but customized to whatever they’re more comfortable in,” Valenzuela said. “In the premium denim category, there is nothing really out there for this size range.”
Wholesale prices range from $81 to $85. Valenzuela hopes that for their money, customers get the kind of look that their size-2 friends find easily.
“It took one and a half years to launch the collection because I was working on the fit that entire time,” she said. “That, for me, was the key: I wanted the women who wear this to be comfortable in what they have on.”
Valenzuela said her objective was to be in 30 to 40 stores by the end of 2007.
— Kavita Daswani
FDJ Aids Cancer Research
FDJ French Dressing is breaking its own fund-raising records.
The Canadian sportswear label raised $244,000 in its fourth annual “FDJ French Dressing International Dragon Boats for the Cure” event in July, funds that will be donated to breast-cancer organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada. This year’s three-day event took place in Windsor, Ontario, included a run and walks and saw a 60 percent improvement compared with last year’s race, which raised $151,000. The event has raised more than $533,000 in the last four years.
“Every year, it amazes me how these formidable women who have overcome this disease band together to help us raise money to fund the search for a cure,” FDJ president Len Miller said in a statement.
The company said that the relationship between dragon-boat racing and breast cancer developed from the work of Canadian physician Don McKenzie. In 1995, McKenzie found that the arm exercise required to paddle a boat was beneficial to breast-cancer patients suffering from swelling in the arms and legs caused by the accumulation of lymphatic fluid, a condition known as lymphedema. As a result, dragon-boat races for breast-cancer patients and survivors have become popular around the world.
More than 300 survivors and 70 corporate teams took part in this year’s events. Each boat holds 20 paddlers and a drummer who sets the pace for the 400-meter race. A portion of the funds raised is distributed to the teams of breast-cancer survivors to donate to their local cancer centers.
— Ross Tucker
Paige Denim Faces Legal Fight
Swimwear designer Ashley Paige and jeans company Paige Premium Denim are in a legal battle over rights to the Paige name.
Ashley Paige filed a lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court, Central District of California, alleging that the denim brand’s use of Paige infringes on Ashley Paige’s trademark and hurts sales. The lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages sought.
“She [Ashley Paige] has been going under the Paige name for a long time, and the jeans company comes along and takes advantage of that,” said attorney Timothy Reuben. “We feel very strongly that she owns these rights [to the Paige name,] and we are seeking to protect those rights.”
Rod Berman, a lawyer for Paige Premium Denim, compared Paige Premium Denim’s and Ashley Paige’s use of Paige with Tommy Hilfiger’s and Tommy Bahama’s use of the name Tommy. “The Ashley Paige position is meritless,” he said. “There are a lot of Paiges out there.”
Paige Premium Denim filed an application almost two years ago with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the name Paige across various apparel categories. In 2005, Ashley Paige kicked off a similar effort to protect the “Ashley Paige” moniker and also to block Paige Premium Denim from securing the rights to Paige.
With the trademark office action pending, Paige Premium Denim went into federal court, seeking a judgment that the company’s handling of the name was appropriate. That move halted the trademark office process and prompted the Ashley Paige lawsuit.
Ashley Paige has its own shop on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood and is primarily recognized for knit one pieces and bikinis, which have been frequently shown at L.A. Fashion Week and are sold at specialty shops and high-end department stores.
Paige Premium Denim is an arm of Fortune Casuals LLC, a Culver City, Calif.-based company cofounded by Fred Kayne, chairman of Big Dog Holdings and a former managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co. Former Miss California and fit model Paige Adams-Geller launched Paige Premium Denim in 2005 and soon started selling jeans in specialty stores, department stores and at a namesake boutique on Robertson Boulevard.
— Rachel Brown
Habitual Gets Groovy
Actress Milla Jovovich and business partner Carmen Hawk have denim on the brain.
The co-founders of contemporary sportswear line Jovovich-Hawk have teamed with premium denim brand Habitual to design a capsule denim collection called Habitual by Jovovich-Hawk, hitting high-end specialty retailers such as Barneys New York for spring selling.
The line features a variety of Sixties- and Seventies-inspired denim pieces, like high-rise flare jeans with patchwork details, a Janis Joplin-inspired mini vest with floral embroidery details and short-shorts with cosmic embroideries on the rear pockets. The pieces will wholesale from $120 to $180.
“Denim was really on our minds since we introduced it in our own line for the first time,” Hawk said. “But the Habitual line is great, and we were really happy to work with them since these were jeans that we wear all the time.”
Jovovich was busy shooting a film over the past few months, but took time out to collaborate on the line.
“It was a really fun process, working on the embroidery, which was really intricate, hand-done and special,” Jovovich said. “The fit is fantastic. I wore them on four airplanes recently and they still kept their shape. I got so many compliments, and they don’t get all stretched out.”
While the Habitual denim is different from Jovovich-Hawk’s denim, Jovovich said working with Habitual helped her learn more about using the fabric.
“The Habitual line looks great with our collection, since we didn’t take our jeans over the top in this way,” Hawk said. “Ours are much more understated.”
— Julee Greenberg