History
At age 16, Carl Williams started designing clothes after learning the essential handcraft at his father's company. Karl never studied tailoring or design, but he had flair for coming up with unusual, stylish concepts. He would buy material and tell a tailor exactly how he wanted his garments to look. "For a relatively small sum", as he put it, "I had a fresh outfit that nobody had."
Karl's customized outfits were so "fresh" that soon they were in demand. After seeing him on the scene in local clubs, men started asking for a Carl Williams' outfit of their own. Soon Karl was taking his first orders in his car. The death of one of his close friends inspired some deep contemplation. "It made me think about life differently", he added " I thought I should really do something positive."
In 1989 Karl headed to Los Angeles where he and a good friend opened a clothing shop on Crenshaw Boulevard. They made no profit at this location and after the shop was robbed, they moved to Hollywood where Karl started selling catalogs for $2 that he and his partner had put together. They only made profit off the catalog sales and didn't actually sell any clothes. He decided to take out an advertisement in Right On!Magazine but even that didn't help jumpstart sales.
Read more about this topic: Karl Kani
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)