Jeff Rudes and his partners started L’Agence in 2008 with the idea of creating a contemporary womenswear collection that had the glamour of Paris with the cool vibe of California.
Over the years, the label has grown to include everything from eveningwear and daywear to weekend clothing, business attire and more. Recently, swimwear, shoes, belts and candles were added to round out the selection found in four L’Agence stores and 300 wholesale accounts.
Even though L’Agence has offered denim since 2018, Rudes, the company’s chairman and creative director, felt there was a need to dig deeper. After all, denim is in his blood. He founded J Brand jeans in late 2004 and sold 80 percent of the Los Angeles jeans company in late 2012 for nearly $300 million to Fast Retailing Co., the Japanese parent company of Uniqlo.
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And denim is on-trend once again, with nearly every luxury brand showing it on the runway from Balmain to Schiaparelli, and early 2000s nostalgia currently fueling the return of low-rise, baggy and bedazzled jeans, denim-on-denim looks and more.
So, after a year of strategizing, Rudes has opened a new retail concept called L’Agence Jean Bar. The first jean bar opened Friday, taking over L’Agence’s first retail outpost on Melrose Place in West Hollywood.
Inside the 1,100-square-foot space, there is not a single silk dress, jersey cardigan or wide-leg trouser in sight. Instead, there is a curated row of jeans in different silhouettes and washes, neatly hanging on a metal installation in the store’s center. Jeans are also displayed on the wall like conceptual art. Also available are denim shirts, jackets and skirts.
Customers can come in, tell a stylist what kind of jeans they want and then have that data entered into an iPad. Up pops numerous suggestions for jeans that start at $245 and are made in Los Angeles. Or customers can just browse the jeans displayed and decide what they want to try on.
Jeans bars are nothing new, but they were more prolific in the 1960s when Fred Segal, the legendary Los Angeles retailer, launched Pants America, his tiny store on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood that specialized in blue jeans. He kept that concept but expanded into a bigger venue, adding California contemporary merchandise and changing the store name to Fred Segal. The location became famous worldwide and was an integral part of a fashionista’s Southern California visit. (Two years ago, Fred Segal relaunched its Original Jean Bar, starting with its West Hollywood flagship.)
“Stores that have a denim environment don’t exist anymore,” Rudes said, saying he has traveled around the world and doesn’t see jean bars like before. “Let’s go back 15 years ago, when Barneys New York did the best job of creating a denim environment. When you went in, you were in the jeans environment, and you were there to purchase jeans. You knew you were going to spend time trying on jeans. It was a great experience, and you left with a purchase that you loved.”
Rudes knows a lot about Barneys New York’s denim environment because he sold many, many J Brand jeans to the department store chain that closed all its stores in 2020 and sold its intellectual rights to Authentic Brands Group. But the idea of a denim space dedicated to one product never left him.
Also, L’Agence’s denim business started exploding last year, he said, and now accounts for 40 to 45 percent of revenues, which he declined to divulge. Rudes wants to raise that to 50 percent of revenues by mid-2025 by providing a customer dedicated service with an in-house denim specialist.
L’Agence Fashion Director Tara Rudes-Dann said the jean bar creates a space for a woman to come in to pick the wash and silhouette she wants. “Our customer is a chameleon. One day she wants a cargo pant, then the next day she wears a wide leg,” said Rudes-Dann, the niece of Jeff Rudes.
Denim preferences are hard to predict, she noted, because even with all the new pant silhouettes out there, the L’Agence slim jeans are still among the brand’s bestsellers.
At the jean bar, the customers’ experience continues in the dressing rooms where they can spend time trying on jeans and working with the in-house stylist. Each dressing room, shrouded in dark blue curtains, has a pair of L’Agence’s kitten-heel mules to try on with the jeans to get the full look.
While jeans and other denim products are the only thing on the store’s menu, customers can have a stylist flip through the iPad to display L’Agence merchandise that could either be paired with jeans or worn separately. It can be delivered the next day or picked up in the nearby Beverly Hills store.
Rudes envisions setting up scores of jean bars around the country, outnumbering L’Agence stores. Currently, there are four L’Agence stores in Beverly Hills and Malibu in California, a Madison Avenue store in New York City whose size will be tripled, and a recently opened Paris store in the Marais district. An outpost in Seoul will be unveiled later this year as well as a Fashion Island location in Newport Beach, Calif.
“I would say for every L’Agence store we open, we could open 10 jean bars because they are relatively small,” Rudes said. “We wouldn’t open a L’Agence store in Austin, Texas, but we would open a jean bar. We might not open a L’Agence store in Nashville, but we would open a jean bar.”
Rudes said opening a denim-centric store is far less precarious than opening a larger location with various merchandise. “Women love their jeans,” he noted. “I would say there is not a lot of risk as long as we have the cachet and reputation of having one of the best jeans around.”