Sergio Valente
Sergio Valente is an American clothing brand best known for juniors' and women's designer jeans and stretch-denim fabrics. It is currently owned by the privately held Seattle Pacific Industries Inc. of Kent, Washington, which additionally owns the Reunion and Saltaire menswear brands and the Unionbay teen-clothing brand.
The brand dates to 1975, but its supposed original designer - 'Sergio Valente' - is fictitious. Mr. Valente, in fact, never existed. The actual creator of the Sergio Valente brand jeans, was Englishtown Sportswear Ltd., a New York City-based company formed by William Hsu, Martin Heinfling, Brian Leung, Tony Lau, Eli Kaplan and Leo Zelkin. Kaplan was bought out around the early-to-mid 1980s, and Zelkin and Heinfling left the company by 1992, the latter a prominent Broadway producer at that point. The remaining shareholders, Leung and Lau, merged Englishtown into Seattle Pacific Industries, which relaunched Sergio Valente sometime thereafter.[1][2]
Sergio Valente has fashion showrooms in New York and Los Angeles. Its jeans are sold in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.
Footnotes
- William R. LaMarca (March 8, 2007), Seattle Pacific Industries v. Golden Valley Realty Associates and Zelkin (PDF), Supreme Court of the State of New York (Nassau County)
- Stephen Holden (September 21, 1986), How the Curtain Came Down on the Dream of 'Rags', New York Times
References
- Sergio Valente (official site)
- The Seattle Times/NW Retail News (June 2003): "Merchandising and Strategy Changes: A glance at retailers that are restrategizing"
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Aug. 7, 2004): "Retail Notebook: Saltaire targets 25-55 demographic". by Christine Frey
- The New York Times (February 11, 2015):"Critic's Notebook: A New Generation of Designer's Chooses Anonymity by Alexandra Jacobs