Type Private Founded 2001 | Area served Worldwide | |
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Founder Andrew Christian, Jeff White Headquarters Hollywood, California, United States | ||
Andrew Christian is an American men's underwear, swimwear, and sportswear manufacturer named after its founder and head-fashion designer Andrew Christian. The brand is arguably best known for its underwear, which include street, sport and fashion lines. Notable products include Flashback, Almost Naked and Show It.
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The company heavily targets the gay community, with the brand operating gay-themed websites, and hosting club events. Its advertising campaigns are known to be provocative. They do club events almost every weekend and throughout the world, "[they] definitely work well. People get to actually see the products in person, and they get a feel for the brand." In 2013 they started promoting safer-sex in conjunction with National Condom Day.
The underwear contains eco-friendly features, including bamboo fiber and organic cotton. Their products use "more than 80 percent of U.S. raw materials and manufactures all of its fashionable and durable men's garments in the states."
The company's namesake, Andrew Christian, has also helped raise the company's profile through reality show appearances and tie-ins. He has been a guest star on Bravo's The Fashion Show, on seasons three and four of Oxygen's The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency doing model casting, in 2013 on Millionaire Matchmaker, the 2013 movie I'm A Porn Star, and both he and the products were a featured part of Logo's RuPaul's Drag Race, as official "Pit Crew" sponsors.
History
Andrew Christian grew up "with nothing…our family was kind of poor," so he became creative to have his own aesthetic, and try to keep up with the designer clothes the other kids were wearing to school. He was about fifteen when he realized he wanted to be a fashion designer for a living. He had been creating new outfits weekly for himself and friends to go to the underground clubs. One of the club promoters he knew owned his own store so he started selling through the site while still in high school. He left Fresno, California with $500, and moved to Los Angeles, California to go to fashion school at age nineteen. He quickly found work with other designers and then started the clothing line soon after in 1997. He supported himself in fashion school by selling his work in local boutiques. He chose a generic cross icon for his logo as he wanted to avoid religious connotations. The regular fashions were followed, over the years, by sportswear, swimwear, and then underwear, "and that's when things really took off." In 2006, with the addition of the underwear lines, sales grew exponentially. In the 2007/2008 season they did an Obama underwear, donating $1 from every sale to the 2008 Barack Obama Presidential Campaign. In 2008 Christian released Black Line, "a higher end dressy line of men’s wear," inspired by the clothes he made for himself, and features ready-to-wear tailored pants and vests. In the 2008/2009 season the company started making clothes for women as well as men. In 2013 Christian worked to expand his sportswear lines, as they were mostly sold out in 2012, as soon as they came into stock.
Products
The Flashback/FlashLIFT is the top selling Andrew Christian product. There is an invisible support seam built into the structure of the underpants that when a man puts it on, it lifts and rounds out the buttock. Christian was inspired to create the product by noticing how hard athletes would work out to improve their rear ends, "wouldn’t it be great if you could just put a pair of underwear that automatically gave you that perfect butt?" In Spring 2009, Andrew Christian introduced Show-It Technology underpants that lifts and supports the genitalia area, generally making it look larger. The Show-It Technology line features 'a cup that lifts and supports your assets' according to their website. The Almost Naked line, which is made from eco-friendly bamboo consist not only of underpants but will expanded into shirts and tanks. The Almost Naked line features underwear that is marketed as "anatomically correct", claiming to prevent kinks or uncomfortable positions, according to the company. The stretchy, 93% bamboo, fiber mix keeps moisture off the body.
They also have a Shock Jock line that has a jock cup with "authentic looking male features" paralleling the female equivalent of the wonderbra. The Shock Jock joined, as of 2011, Andrew Christian's bestselling product line, the Flashback which enhances the appearance in the rear but without any padding. They now have products that add extra padding for either the front or rear.
Another product they feature is a performance-wear brief, Dry and Naked, the New York Times noted it rode low on the hips but had a snug fit keeping everything in place for running.
For swimwear they work in two seasons; spring/summer, and resort wear. As of 2007 they had about 20 swimwear designs compared to 40 underwear designs.