NEW YORK — Who would have thought that shorts could transcend seasons?
Kristen Johnson’s shorts-only collection, Johnson, has done just that, and retailers from Los Angeles to New York to Australia are snatching them up.
“I think it’s filling a void,” Johnson, a San Diego transplant who settled in Los Angeles, said of the collection that launched last fall. “It’s really strange. I wouldn’t have predicted it, but girls these days need it. It’s like a short skirt alternative.”
Johnson, a former stylist for music videos and commercials, happened into the designer role by chance. She said she has always worn shorts — “I grew up in them.” But the lack of shorts in the market required her to either buy vintage ones even though they frequently were “kitschy, high-waisted or unflattering in the back,” she said. So Johnson decided to make her own better-fitting styles out of vintage men’s wear fabrics.
A fellow stylist asked for a pair of custom-made shorts for Hilary Duff to wear for a Blender magazine photo shoot. The shorts, and Duff, made it to the cover. After that, Johnson said, all the “young celebrity girls,” like Kirsten Dunst, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, began wearing them.
The collection consists of five different styles that can be found in more than 200 specialty stores around the world including Intermix in New York, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London and Curve, Satine, and Madison in Los Angeles.
Styles range from a mid-thigh version with wide cuffs to swingy, short sailor shorts. Some styles have inseams as short as two inches, while others fall to the knee. For fall, she added silk jumpers, leggings and unitards to the mix. Johnson wants customers in all climates to be able to layer these pieces so they can be worn year-round.
Wholesale prices range from $70 for corduroy or fleece shorts to $165 for a wool jumper. Johnson said she anticipates the wholesale volume will reach $4 million by the end of 2006.
While a collection of pants could materialize, Johnson said she is focusing on shorts because she doesn’t see the trend losing steam any time soon. “It’s like pants or skirts,” she said. “You just have to keep changing it with whatever is going on in fashion.” That said, Johnson is considering adding fitted blazers to the collection.
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“Short suits,” she said. “It seems like a natural progression.”