Now Playing: L.A. Guy and Dawls

NEW YORK — Trendoids and hipsters, listen up. It’s pop (culture) quiz time. “Drawls” is street slang for what?

For the answer, let’s check in with Ryan Rush, a 28-year-old designing dude from Maywood, Calif., who snowboards, surfs a little and has been skateboarding since he was 6.

Drawls, says the grown-up Rush with a buzz haircut, means really cool clothes. He thought Drawls was the best name for the streetwear he began designing for guys in 1991.

Three years later, Rush started designing Dawls, which he calls really cool clothes for girls. The line was cool enough for him to be invited, for the second year in a row, to participate in “Girls Rule!,” the only show during General Motors Fashion Week here devoted exclusively to clothes for teens.

His streetwear, produced in Los Angeles, was shown Wednesday night along with clothes from five other junior wear companies--Bongo, Hybrid, Malibu, Coolwear and Backseat by Undergirl--all based in New York.

Rush’s clothes were girlie but not cutesy: T-shirts with logos (like “Totally Nuts” with a squirrel munching on an acorn), baseball shirts with three-quarter-length sleeves--some with solid-colored fronts and backs and print sleeves, and a snowboarding white vest paired with a denim skirt rolled up on one side and tied in place for an asymmetrical effect.

Dawls’ focus was utility: Pants zipped off into shorts or had hidden pockets for “stuff.” Skirts and pants were made of supplex nylon--a popular fabric for board shorts.

He cleverly used drawstrings and bungee cords as straps on dresses or as drawstrings at the hems of miniskirts. Colors were vivid: orange, red, blue, yellow, green.

The look was clearly Southern California.

Duh!

“The whole line is based on the Southern California lifestyle--skating, surfing, snowboarding,” Rush said backstage after the show. His dad, Grier, and mom, Susan, were there enjoying the scene and their son’s success.

In 1989, Rush graduated from Valley Christian High, a private school in Cerritos, and took a part-time job as a stock boy at the Cerritos Nordstrom while going to Cerritos College full time, studying engineering and car design.

“But I was always into fashion,” he says. So, after saving every penny he earned and adding that to other savings, he quit college after three years and started Drawls with his $24,000 in savings. Today, Dawls and Drawls are part of Brand Lab Inc., a privately held company that also owns BC Ethic, a well-known brand of streetwear for young men.

Rush’s clothes are sold at Pacific Sunwear, Fred Segal on Melrose, Mr. Rags and Nordstrom as well as in mail-order catalogs such as Delia’s, Moxie Girl and Alloy. Sales are expected to reach $8 million this year.

“Everything is done through our customer’s point of view. She might not be a surfer or skater or snowboarder, but she identifies with that culture.”

At the fashion show was a posse of youthful editors from Teen, Jump, Jane, Alloy, Seventeen and several other magazines. Many of the young women flashed smiles revealing braces. Most looked like clones from Clueless high school: cell phones at their ears, odd-shaped platforms on their feet, skinny bodies squeezed into trendy Lycra tube tops and nylon trousers that made noise when they walked.

But Rush had nothing to fear. They liked him. They really liked him and his really cool clothes.

Michael Quintanilla can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].