Trovata

Late last night, right before I'm about to go to sleep, I get an IM from Joe Curley*, my fraternity brother from Pomona, who currently works as a sports writer in Ventura.

*Trust me when I say you have not met a bigger fan of sports than ol' Joe - he knows the statistics for every player, playing in every league of every sport in the entire world backwards and forwards. One obsession of his during college was this soccer game entitled "Championship Manager" where you act, not as player, but as coach, making trades to maximize your team's success, and the soccer matches are played out in text, rather than graphics. It is the virtual world equivalent of watching paint dry, though admittedly less colorful. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his sports-related lunacy.

So, as is the custom, we get to chatting and I inquire about what a few of our mutual friends have been up to since the halcyon days of college. Before long, I get to Josia, a Stanford transfer student who spent some of his days partying and playing video games with us. Last I knew, he was living near school awaiting the graduation of his girlfriend. He seemed to have no concrete ideas about what to do next; for the most part, skateboarding occupied his time. When prompted by questions as to Josia's whereabouts, Joe replies "You haven't heard?" and, after a few seconds of brain-numbing suspense, he passes on a link to a Rolling Stone article.

At this point, my interest is piqued, but I had no idea what was in store for me. Clicking on the link, I am shocked to see that Josia and some friends, including a former CMC student started a very successful fasion line called Trovata (www.trovata.com), which is currently being shown all over the world and is sold at only the most upscale boutiques, including Barney's of New York. According to the article, Josia is the development director, whatever that means.

What excites me most about their clothing line is the brilliant marketing plan - rather than just have some models on a runway show off their newest collection, the gang creates characters that would wear the clothes and a story to bring those characters to life. For example, they debuted their fall line during Fashion Week in NYC at a posh mansion and had the models playing a mock game of croquet to represent the aristocratic family which had fallen from grace that the clothing line was based on.

Thanks to the fact that each one looks like he should be on the OC and their work-while-playing attitudes, Josia et al. have become press darlings. Thus far, they've appeared in Elle, GQ, Vogue just to name a few. Here's the Rolling Stone article, if you're interested (Josia is on the far right):

Trovata Style surfers

You Know Them From The moment its first collection of prepster-meets-surfer-dude casual clothes was shipped out of design director John Whitledge's dorm room at Claremont McKenna College in 2002, this label, run by four school buds (Whitledge, Sam Shipley, Josia Lamberto-Egan, Jeff Halmos), has become one of the hippest in the menswear business.

The Breakthrough Trovata recently introduced its first line for women, and the quartet won accolades for its first New York Fashion Week appearance. "Manhattan was overwhelming," says Whitledge. That's why the guys -- all twenty-seven or younger and avid surfers -- do their thing in Newport Beach, California, where their offices are not coincidentally located just two blocks from the water.

Endless Summer "We all grew up working in board-sport stores," says company art director Shipley. "We were dreaming of doing clothing lines while still in high school."

Hang Size Ten Look out for Trovata-designed limited-edition Vans, packaged in vintage cigar boxes, to hit select stores in the fall.