LOS ANGELES — With the opening of a second retail store here, New York-based designer Tracy Feith thinks that it may be time to set up a home nearby.
But it’s not only his two Melrose Place shops — the women’s opened in fall 2003; a men’s space and gallery bowed last month — that has Feith considering that option. And neither is it because of plans to return to wholesale with spring 2006 after an almost four-year hiatus from specialty and department stores.
So what’s the extra motivation for Feith to contemplate living in California? It’s the surf, of course. After days of putting the finishing touches on his men’s store, he had an early morning date with his surfboard and the Pacific.
Feith, a 42-year-old Texan, is the epitome of surfer cool. There’s the wavy, long and bleached-out hair, which he constantly pushes back. His men’s collection includes boardshorts and custom surfboards.
And there’s his personal style, a mix of jeans and suit jacket over a dress shirt cut from a pink carousel horse print from his men’s line. Worn unbuttoned to midchest, he still manages to come off more meat-and-potatoes than metrosexual.
“He surfs all the time. It’ll be good to have him focus some of that energy on the new wholesale,” said Feith’s business and life partner of a decade, Susan Winget, at the Feith store in Manhattan’s NoLIta. This first shop opened in 1998, the walls now washed in bright turquoise. It was followed in a year by a seasonal store — on the backside of a surf store resembling a beach shack — in East Hampton, N.Y., on Long Island.
Since 2001, the whimsical ready-to-wear line only sold through Feith’s own stores and a handful of others loyal to him during his 18 years in business. He and Winget, 43, decided to scale back the wholesale end upon the birth of their son Anthony. The company is at a comfortable $3 million in annual retail sales, Winget said.
As for Feith’s love affair with surfing, New Jersey, which Feith drives to regularly from the Manhattan home he shares with Winget in search of waves, is cold at this time of the year. Still, Feith may have to settle on Los Angeles as more of a secondary residence because Winget oversees operations, including production mostly done in New York, and their four-and-a-half-year-old son is in school.
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“There’s a certain feeling here that you can live your dream, your fantasy,” Feith said of the West Coast. “That’s one of the reasons I love it here and want to get a house here. There are things people can wear here all year long. New York is much more utilitarian with choices, particularly in the day and depending on the weather.”
A guy can certainly dream. And Feith has done his share. At 18, he left Sherman, Tex., for Orange County, California, the then-fledgling hub of board sports, in pursuit of becoming a pro skateboarder. By his mid-20s, he was in New York realizing another dream by launching his own line of men’s and women’s wear.
He and Winget, a former stylist, met a decade ago in acting classes. It was a side exploration for Feith after eight years in the fashion business. Instead of going on casting calls, he and the Connecticut-born-and-raised Winget headed to Mexico and other sunny points with surf.
They returned from their travels, “mostly because we ran out of money,” recalled Winget. Together, they focused on cultivating the line of pretty, bohemian party dresses and special daywear.
“We have an outsider feel and that makes the clothes much more timeless,” Feith said. “Hopefully, they’re special enough that years later, they still want to wear it. Or they can hand it down to their daughter.”
Neiman Marcus and dozens of other boutiques sold the line. Many of them didn’t stop calling since the wholesale interruption.
“We always had a nice business from Tracy,’’ said Barneys New York fashion director Julie Gilhart. “It will be interesting to see what his new ideas are. We’ll totally take a look at it.”
“Already buyers are asking, ‘Can we have four dresses for next season?’” Winget said. “We see Tracy’s clothes being copied around the world. So, yes, we have to do department store business because otherwise someone else is going to do it.”
Without much distribution and no advertising, the Tracy Feith cult has managed to flourish. The company insisted it doesn’t court celebrities, yet Feith’s distinctive dresses show up on the red carpet worn by paying clients such as Kate Hudson, Jessica Simpson and Reese Witherspoon.
“Tracy’s thing goes back to that passion for the girl on the street,’’ Winget said. “We want to honor the actual customer who comes with her pocketbook, not the celebrity who borrows the dress, not the fashion editor.” The collection retails from $210 to $500 for tops, $1,000 to $2,200 for jackets, $600 to $1,200 for dresses; one-off looks start at $2,500.
Plans for wholesale are not about blowing out the self-financed company. “We would keep the wholesale business modest because we’d like to keep within what we can do ourselves,’’ she said. “We don’t want to get to $10 million, but we can manage $6 million on our own.”
That said, Winget admitted, “If the right backer came along…deep down, Tracy does want to be that big business.”
More signature stores are in their future. A men’s store in Manhattan would be the most likely, said Feith, and he cited Palm Beach and St. Barts as potential sites for both collections.
In the meantime, a four-year search for the perfect retail street in Los Angeles brought them to Melrose Place — before the mad rush by Marc Jacobs and others.
“This is what I thought a California store should be like,” Feith said of his eclectic spin on the Hollywood Regency style, “glamorous, unpretentious; formal but casual at the same time.”
Both stores share the barefoot glam of Palm Springs-Palm Beach retro informed by Feith’s brand of beach-boy cool.
The 1,000-square-foot women’s store has door-sized windows with mannequins looking out to the sidewalk and is accessed at the side through a courtyard appointed with a fountain.
Inside, it’s a riot of reflection and color, even without the chunky crystal-trimmed coats and Fifties promlike dresses cut from Indian batik, or the shoes, jewelry and handbags Winget buys seasonally from designers to supply clients with an overall look.
A different foil wallpaper in each of the three salons and dressing rooms lights up under the glow of glass chandeliers and the flood of sunlight through the expanse of windows. A lime green chair is near a lemon-colored Sixties-era modular display case; a lavender wrought iron lamp set off by the green fern leaves printed on the wallpaper hangs in the front hallway.
A few doors down, the new trilevel men’s store devotes a floor to clothes, another to surfboards and the top loftlike area to books and videos. Feith said he also intends to showcase his favorite photographers and artists throughout the year. A jewel box of a space, the 700-square-foot store’s pedigree includes former occupant Adrian.
New to the men’s store is what Feith calls the “dad and lad” concept. Inspired by his son, there are shirts for boys ages two to eight just like those for men.
But there are no plans to duplicate the idea for the daughters of Feith’s female customers. “We’re just a small company. There’s too much to do already,” he laughed.