Lucky Gene's Karma

Renaissance entrepreneur Gene Montesano broke in the jeans biz with Lucky Brand, expanded to casual wear, opened a slew of restaurants in Santa Barbara and started a charitable foundation, attracting Hollywood all along the way.

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FADE IN:

The year is 1972. The place is Miami Beach, years before the trendy South Beach explosion. The camera pans to two young men sitting under a dazzling marlin blue sky, the broad Atlantic stretching before them. Gene Montesano, a long-haired, 23-year-old Italian in worn blue jeans and a leather jacket he made himself, talks animatedly with Barry Perlman, his pal of two years, a 19-year-old Jewish kid whose long hair and bleached jeans also reflect the coolness of the period. They toss back tequila shots and talk about an idea they've got. And you can hear in Montesano's throaty voice--reminiscent of Frankie Pentangeli in The Godfather, the year's hottest movie--that they think they're on to something that could be very big.

Though it sounds like a story of two streetwise young men headed for trouble, these two risk-takers end up making millions, amass a loyal fan base that includes some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry and, through their generosity, become heroes to a steady stream of physically challenged kids.

What Montesano and Perlman had in mind was to open a jeans store on Sunset Drive in South Miami with another buddy. They called it Four Way Street and hoped that Montesano's original leather and appliqué items and their denim jeans--which they bought pre-made, bleached after-hours at a friend's father's Laundromat and stitched and seamed to look original--would not only be cool but would help them meet girls.

It worked well for three years until Montesano heeded the call of the West Coast, leaving his best buddy in Florida to open a couple more stores on his own. Following a brief stint at Guess, Montesano launched Bongo, a hot jeans brand in the '80s. In 1991, after 10 years on the corporate track, Montesano bailed out on Bongo, convinced Perlman to join him in Los Angeles and the two friends started Lucky Brand.

Montesano created much of the hip Lucky Brand artwork and designed a jeans collection that paid homage to the vintage look, spirit and quality of America in the '50s, but with a decidedly contemporary appeal. The collection grew from jeans to other hot clothing items, and over the ensuing years, Lucky Brand's ironic twist on fashion and promotion caught the attention of a very loyal audience, many of whom were in the public eye themselves.

Though Montesano stresses, "we don't chase celebrities; we appreciate their business and respect their privacy," plenty of Hollywood's shiniest have gotten Lucky on their own. Like Britney Spears, who recently popped into their Santa Monica store and emerged all dressed in Lucky Brand, much to the delight of a throng of paparazzi who had followed her there. John Travolta and Kelly Preston's publicists were called first to see if it was OK to tell the press that they had been shopping at another one of the stores. And, after hearing that Renee Zellweger loved Lucky Brand, Montesano sent her some things--without ever telling the press.

Sometimes that privacy thing really pays off, like when Montesano and Perlman got into a conversation about guitars with James Taylor while their flight was delayed. Then one day Taylor showed up at one of the stores, dished with the guys about work on his new CD and, much to Montesano's surprise, "wore a pair of our jeans on the cover and thanked Virgil's Barbeque and Lucky Brand on the back of the CD."

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