The Lucky 13 label is celebrating 20 years in the clothing game. Back in 1991, Bobby Kloetzly along with Arnie Sakamoto and a few of their friends started the line out of a building in Westminster. They quickly became a staple in Southern California, especially in the punk rock, psychobilly and rockabilly music scenes.
They're now based in Santa Ana and run like a well-oiled machine with about 80 per cent of the total manufacturing happening on-site.
Their headquarters also has a band rooms, so when artists decide to stop by, they have a place to chill.
Bobby Kloetzly spoke to Kelli Skye Fadroski from The County Orange Register about the 20 years of Lucky 13.
He admitted that, while being in the business for 20 years is no small feat, there have been some rough patches along the way.
I definitely wasn't expecting to make it this far, he says. Not that we had any goal in mind in particular, but that we did make it through a couple of tough times with this company is pretty exciting. All of a sudden we realize Hey, it's our 20th year this year' and we needed to do something about it. So we've had a couple of events and we're making a couple of limited edition items and we're having a lot of fun with it. There are a lot of people that have been with us along this road and everyone is kind of shaking their heads at the same time going, Wow, where did the time go?' Twenty years, just like that.
As Kelli reports:
Lucky 13's style, for women, includes pin-up and 1920s-40s style dresses in various colors and patterns, pencil skirts, halter tops and button-up cardigans. For men, the fashion features a lot of collared work or bowling shirts in various colors and patterns that include embroidery. T-shirts and tanks include traditional style tattoo flash such as skulls, roses, crosses, vintage pin-up girls, anchors, cars, motorcycles, guitars and more. Lucky 13 even designs clothing for babies, tweens and toddlers.
