'Fashion gets religion'

I'm running low on topics to blog about this morning, so how about this six-month old story from the New York Observer that has been sitting in my queue for, oh, a while?

Last week, roughly 80 fashion industry types gathered on the seventh floor of a midtown office building for their monthly dinner. Before digging in, they bowed their heads and closed their eyes.

“Father, we come to you right now, and we thank you for this wonderful time, this food that was wonderfully prepared,” said Seth Whalen, a model. “Bless the hands that have prepared it, and bless the food to our bodies, strengthen us and enrich us and allow your word to just speak to us tonight, in your most precious name Lord Jesus, Amen.”

From a small stage, Mr. Whalen—26, baby-faced with a goatee, his full hair pulled back under a ball cap—explained the purpose of the group to any newcomers. “We’re a bunch of people from New York City’s fashion industry, here to seek in our God, in this crazy, crazy industry. God in fashion is a paradox in itself. So that’s what we do, and that’s who we are.”

Mr. Whalen is a “core leader” of the group, which calls itself Paradox and is the New York hub of Models for Christ, founded in 1982 by Jeff Calenberg. Only a few months into his modeling career, adrift in the debauched world of Milan’s fashion world, Mr. Calenberg—blond, fair, piercing blue eyes—said he knew that the he would wind up in the Valley of Darkness without some Christian amigos to help keep him righteous. According to the Models for Christ materials, while in Milan, Mr. Calenberg “designed and distributed a small pamphlet that presented the prestige and struggles of the fashion industry and how Jesus Christ can provide true fulfillment. Since then, Models for Christ has grown and expanded from models to photographers, agents, fashion designers …”

Mr. Calenberg said the group started with about five members and now includes more than 1,000, with regular meetings in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. He intimated that a number of famous people have come to the meetings; model and actress Rene Russo was the only one he felt comfortable revealing. About five years ago, the New York group renamed itself Paradox to appeal to a broader audience. Models for Christ has spawned other groups such as Haven, a group for Christian actors founded by Arrested Development sitcom star Tony Hale.

Tony Hale!

Woody Allen sues American Apparel for rabbi ad

Remember der heyliker rebe, Woody Allen, whose mug from "Annie Hall" was seen on this American Apparel billboard in Echo Park only to disappear a few days later?

Well, today Allen filed a $10-million suit against the L.A.-based clothier, claiming the notoriously edgy advertiser used his image without permission. Either that or he just didn't want to be "Jewish hustler" Dov Charney's spiritual guide.

Kosher clothing

My colleague, Jay Firestone, aka Video Jew, has this short on a sweatshop-free fashion show. Yeah, that's his broadcast voice.

Former Pepperdine ballplayer the face of 'Crazy Robertson'

The religion angle here is tenuous -- the subject once played on Pepperdine's baseball team -- but the Wall Street Journal has a story today about one of L.A.'s most recognizable homeless men, John Wesley Jermyn. He's known as the "Crazy Robertson," and this year an overpriced clothing brand was created in his honor (that might not be the right word).

Among locals and online, there's much speculation about Mr. Jermyn's personal history, including one oft-repeated rumor that he's a secretive millionaire.

In a plot twist worthy of Tinseltown, Mr. Jermyn now has a clothing label named after him. Since it was introduced last month, "The Crazy Robertson" brand of T-shirts and sweatshirts, created by a trio of 23-year-olds, has flown off the shelves at Kitson, a haunt of tabloid stars like Paris Hilton. The clothes feature stylized images of Mr. Jermyn, including one design -- available on a $98 hoodie -- that has a graphic of him dancing and the phrase "No Money, No Problems" on the back. At the largest of Kitson's three boutiques on Robertson, shirts bearing Mr. Jermyn's likeness are sold alongside $290 "Victoria Beckham" jeans and $50 baby shoes designed by pop star Gwen Stefani.

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Mr. Jermyn's slide into homelessness is a painful subject for his sister Beverly. And so is the clothing deal. She believes "The Crazy Robertson" founders are exploiting her brother's condition to build their brand. "I think these guys saw an opportunity and they took it," she says. "I am not happy with the arrangement."

Ms. Jermyn, who lives close to the alley where Mr. Jermyn sleeps, says her brother has a form of schizophrenia. He refuses to take medication, she says, despite suffering from fits of shouting and cursing. In the years since his condition began deteriorating in the late 1970s, "he slipped through my fingers like sand," says Ms. Jermyn, 64, who manages facilities for Oracle Corp.

In the late 1980s she testified in court in a proceeding to force her brother to seek help, but psychological evaluators found him "lucid and gracious," according to Ms. Jermyn. She has made countless attempts to provide him with shelter and therapy, and she still visits him twice a week with food. She also pays for his cellphone and collects his Social Security checks on his behalf.

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Mr. Jermyn was raised in Hancock Park, a historic L.A. neighborhood that's home to some of the city's wealthiest families. His father managed one of L.A.'s largest Chevrolet dealerships.

A star athlete in high school, Mr. Jermyn was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the 1969 Major League Baseball draft. He attended Pepperdine University and played a season for a Los Angeles Dodgers' minor-league team in Bellingham, Wash. (He hit just .205 and made 12 errors in 63 games, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.)

Joel John Roberts, chief executive of People Assisting the Homeless, which provides shelters for L.A.'s street residents, says the branding of Mr. Jermyn is "like designing a line of clothing patterned after Iraqi refugees fleeing the war."

Here is a video of Jermyn's dance-skating.



(Hat tip: LAObserved.)

The 'Jewish hustler' gets some real green

Dov Charney is a self-described "Jewish hustler," and today he hustled some real dough out of the deal that is buying out his clothing company, American Apparel. Mark Lacter, whose LA Biz Observed is my main source of financial news, has the info and reports that AA employees now sign a document stating:

“American Apparel is in the business of designing and manufacturing sexually charged T-shirts and intimate apparel, and uses sexually charged visual and oral communications in its marketing and sales activity.”

Lacter also linked to this New York Times article about Charney:

Mr. Charney has gained a reputation as the Hugh Hefner of retailing, decorating his stores with covers of Penthouse magazine and admitting in interviews to sleeping with employees. In lawsuits filed in 2005, several employees charged him with creating a work environment in which women did not feel safe. They claimed in the lawsuits, for example, that Mr. Charney conducted job interviews in his underwear and gave a vibrator to at least one female worker. Mr. Charney has denied the charges, and judges have dismissed some of the lawsuits against him. In the interview, Mr. Charney said that the media had “exploited American Apparel on certain issues,” adding, “I would never do an interview in my underwear.”

Sure, every know and then an AA ad is innocuous, even cute like that unauthorized billboard of Woody Allen as "der heyliker rebe." But Charney really has a knack for provocativeness. “I could pull my penis out right now," he told The Jewish Journal a few years ago, "and I guarantee you no one would be offended.”

Whose rebbe is Woody Allen?

I guess he's American Apparel founder Dov Charney's in this billboard from NY's Lower East Side, via the Forward.

Beside the photo of Allen dressed as a Hasid are the words “der heyliker rebe” — “the holy rebbe.” Alex Spunt of AA told the Forward, “Woody Allen is our spiritual leader.”

I'm looking around Los Angeles to see if American Apparel, which is based here, has put the same ad up. Let me know if you see it.

As for Charney, a self-described "Jewish hustler," he has been a conspicuous character, with a reputation for racy ads and the cloud of harassment accusations that the Jewish Journal wrote about in this cover story two years ago. (“I could pull my penis out right now," he told The Journal, "and I guarantee you no one would be offended.”)