Remember those high-flying days in the mid-'90s when Orange County action-sportswear god Mossimo Giannulli was the IT guy? And how he soon made a splashy leap into high-end fashion? And how he said at the time his brand would never wind up in stores like Target? And how, facing bankruptcy in 2000, he cut a deal to indeed put his brand into Targets, a resuscitation that has paid off handsomely, pushed the Mossimo brand into other retail categories like home furnishings and spurred Mossimo to re-up its relationship with the retailer through 2010? Well, now the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Van Nuys-based Cherokee Inc., whose low-end fashions hang right next to Mossimo's in Target stores, is making a bid to buy out Mossimo Inc. That may seem undignified to the fashion set Giannulli once (and perhaps still does) hang with, but if it means this Unaccessorized Time-Teller can smartly match a $7.78 Day-Glo orange Cherokee shirt with a pair of $12.37 plum-and-wedding-gown-white plaid Mossimo Bermudas pulled from the same Target clearance rack, it's all good.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.