Chip & Pepper

And neither do denim design team Chip & Pepper Foster.

What do you imagine sharing Sunday breakfast with Chip and Pepper Foster would be like? You can’t have forgotten the larger-than-life personalities of the rowdy blonde twins, exploding all over pop-culture during that time when you couldn’t walk down the hallway at school without seeing a flash of the sunglass-wearing-bulldog logo. You remember ’80s sportswear-label icons Chip & Pepper from when they too were just kids, brandishing fluorescent sweatshirts, beach-boy attitudes and a high profile, lavish lifestyle. However, this dedicated design duo have been through a lot more than laying on the beach and doing TV spots during the journey that took them from their roots in Burlington and Winnipeg to sunny Los Angeles; before you start thinking that you still know these ambitious designers based only on their past presence, a caveat: these creative boys are all grown up, and into some serious business.

The business the fashion-savvy pair went for this round is that of high-end denim: in Fall of 2003, they launched their premium vintage Chip and Pepper denim collection to rave reviews, and their casual yet sexy-ass cuts have since rapidly shown up on dozens of celebrities, magazine covers, in TV shows and fashion shoots, all over the world. The brothers’ designs grace such famous ass as Sarah Jessica Parker, Kiera Knightly, Beyoncé Knowles, Colin Farrell, and the girls from The O.C., and most recently Sportswear International tipped their hats to the line’s authentic-vintage look by naming it winner of Best Men’s Denim in the 2005 SIFA Awards–pretty much the highest accolade you can achieve in the fashion world. So what makes these jeans so damn fly that they even usurped Paper Denim & Cloth in Cosmo’s Hot List?

"It’s the denim we use!" Chip tells me excitedly, "And the cuts," "And each pair is totally hand-crafted and individually detailed," Pepper interjects. "The denim is made for us at mills in the US, where they still make it how they did back in the early 1900s. It has the same warp and weft as it did in the early west–here, take a look," Chip passes us a pair of the famous jeans for a closer glimpse. He describes the process used, and when asked how he knows so much about old denim: "Years of working in the vintage store, y’know, I got so into denim, I live and breathe vintage, it’s like an addiction..." I explain to him that yep, my own vintage collection is taking over my household, and he says his love of vintage led him to open Golf Punk, the twins’ famous and famously shopped vintage specialty store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. "The thing I always noticed is that everyone wants the look and the feel of old, beat-in jeans, but with better fits," Chip explains. "Yeah, a lot of older jeans have great detailing and washes but the cut sucks, y’know, they’ll have a long rise and high pockets," Pepper pipes up, "And so we’ve made the cuts people are looking for, with the details and the washes applied by hand, so they’re all one-of-a-kind." They have an array of denim ready to show us, as well as some other new items: hoodies with roughed-up edges and screens of forest-dwelling wildlife, t-shirts of buttery soft cotton–with skulls and a vaguely camo print running into and on top of each other. It’s pretty deadly–and fresh, not derivative of the Italian high-end lines that have become so commonplace.

The twins tell me part of the reason things have been going so well is because they’re doing this denim thing their way. "We wanted to be in charge this time," says Chip, "Things got so out of our control before, we wanted to ensure that we’re doing this our way, so we’re in control of everything, from the design to the marketing." Pepper continues.

The "before" he refers to: the years the brothers seemed to disappear from popular consciousness, after their brand name and signature Bulldog logo over saturated the market on everything from barbeque sauce to sneakers. "The brand became unfocused, we were no longer in control, we ended up in a complicated legal battle," Chip says, "We lost the rights to our own names for a bit there," finishes Pepper. Without a trace of "LA" schmooze (though they’ve lived there for almost 15 years) they speak of their humble beginnings starting their business with only a thousand-dollar loan from their dad, and describe the wildness of being a kid with a project that is suddenly an international, million-dollar-making brand-name. "You’ve always got to dream big–if you dream something it can happen," Chip says, while Pepper details the downside of getting in over your head and doing crazy things before you realize the ramifications for your company. "What would you do if this all happened to you as a teenager in Winnipeg," he laughs, "Party your ass off? Buy a few yachts?" "We had to fight for our own trademark, for our own names! We got it back, but," the twins exchange a weighted glance "that was a bad time, a tough four years." "Longer than that, Pep..." Chip remembers.

So what did they do in the downtime? "Aw, I traveled all over Europe," Pepper tells, "And I went to LA and started up Golf Punk," Chip goes on, "Things just went from there... Pepper came back to run the store with me, y’know: there’s nothing stronger than two brothers as business partners. When it’s bad, you know he’s got your back, when it’s good you’ve got the best business partner in the world to share it with. It’s ideal." Read More…