Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
The latest media to discover the luxury denim industry in downtown L.A. is the New York Times, which focuses Wednesday on Bread Denim and draws the obligatory bigger meaning:
Its sure-fire business plan? To manufacture $200 vintage-washed, 100 percent organic cotton jeans — not in Asia or Latin America, where the vast majority of jeans are made, but in downtown Los Angeles.
“We went into this knowing we could fail,” said Jason Ferro, Bread’s founder....
Everything about the luxury denim industry, which began taking root here in 2000, has a fly-by-night feel, from the esoteric brand names — Antik, Nudie, Evisu, Monarch — to the sky-high prices, which have hit $1,000 a pair. But the new business is firmly rooted in this city’s rich blue-jean past, tapping into a vast network of experienced designers, sewers, laundry houses and fabric importers who gave birth to the first generation of designer denim in the late 1970s and ’80s — brands like Guess and Hilfiger — only to fall idle when such companies moved much of their manufacturing to China and Latin America.
Wish I'd taken a picture, but in Paris I saw a doorway sign for American Apparel that boasted in French that its clothing was "made in Downtown L.A."
Cropped photo: Monica Almeida / New York Times