A bikini shop, a remark at a runway show and a new name.

Wet Seal started in 1962 as a small swimwear shop in Newport Beach, California. The New York Times, reporting in September 2004 and quoting a company history, described it as a “bikini shack” founded that year and originally named Lorne’s, after its founder, Lorne Huycke. English Wikipedia gives the same founder, town, year and original name.

The name that replaced it came from a fashion show. According to the company history quoted by the Times, the founder’s wife watched a model walk the runway in a glossy black bathing suit and remarked to her husband, “She looks like a wet seal.” The paper said the shop was renamed a few years after it opened; Wikipedia lists Lorne’s as the former name until 1990 and says the company was incorporated as Wet Seal that year. Either way, the name kept the business’s beach origins in plain sight: an image of a sleek, wet swimmer, borrowed from the swimsuits the shop had been built to sell.

The chain grew under new leadership. The Times reported in 2004 that Irving Teitelbaum had been chairman since 1984 and had overseen the chain’s growth, and that he was also chairman and chief executive of the Canadian lingerie retailer La Senza. By the early 2000s the business was based in Foothill Ranch, California, and the Times described it as a chain of mall-based specialty stores whose teenage customers had rushed to pick up its “signature bohemian tops and trendy jeans”.

The company described its own customer in narrow terms. A corporate page archived in January 2008 called Wet Seal “the junior apparel brand for teenage girls that seek fashion-first clothing”, selling a mix of branded and company-developed apparel and accessories. The same page said Wet Seal had set up an online store at wetseal.com in 1999, which it described as an extension of the in-store experience.

In 2017 the brand’s eventual buyer, Gordon Brothers, summed up the look by describing Wet Seal as known for a “surf-and-sun aesthetic” aimed at fashion-focused teenagers, according to Retail Dive.

Contempo Casuals, Arden B., Blink and two bankruptcies.

In the 1990s Wet Seal grew by acquisition and by creating new store names. Wikipedia records that in 1995 the company bought the Contempo Casuals chain from the Neiman Marcus Group. Contempo Casuals kept its own name for several years; Wikipedia says many of its stores were later renamed, and that the remaining ones were converted into Wet Seal stores in 2001.

Many of those Contempo Casuals sites became Arden B., a brand Wet Seal launched in November 1998, according to Wikipedia. Arden B. was aimed at an older customer than Wet Seal: The New York Times described it in 2004 as catering to women in their late twenties and early thirties, and the company’s archived corporate page called it a contemporary fashion brand for customers aged 25 to 45. The company said it opened ardenb.com in August 2002, giving the second brand a web store alongside Wet Seal’s.

A third name followed. Wikipedia, citing The Orange County Register of June 2010, says the company announced Blink by Wet Seal that month, a smaller-format store focused on denim for the same teenage customer. Unlike Arden B., Blink carried the parent name in its title. In 2014, the Register reported, Wet Seal said it would close its Arden B. stores.

On 16 January 2015 The Wet Seal, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection, and Business Insider, citing The Wall Street Journal, later reported that Versa Capital acquired the brand in April 2015. Business Insider reported on 26 January 2017 that Wet Seal was closing all of its remaining stores and its headquarters in Irvine, California, in what Retail Dive described as its second bankruptcy in just over two years.

Gordon Brothers bought the Wet Seal name in March 2017. Retail Dive reported on 6 March 2017 that the Boston-based restructuring and branding firm had topped a stalking-horse bid from the Canadian apparel retailer YM at the bankruptcy auction, and that Judge Christopher S. Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington had approved the purchase. Ramez Toubassy, Gordon Brothers’ president of brands, said the firm would “rebuild and reposition the brand” with a new business model. The same report noted that Gordon Brothers had already taken on the Polaroid brand.

Design and documentation.

The names in this group were shopping-mall apparel chains, and a mall chain’s identity was carried less by any one garment than by the shop itself. The storefront sign above an open gate, the lettering on a carrier bag, the swing tags on the clothes, the window posters and the catalogue or mailer were the places where a customer met the name, often within a few steps of a dozen competing signs on the same concourse.

That makes the questions behind each name practical ones: who opened the first store and where, which companies owned the chain over time, and what became of the name once the stores themselves closed or changed hands. A retail name can outlive its shops as a trademark, a website or a label sold through another retailer, so the brand on a sign and the company behind it are not always the same thing.

Each guide separates what independent, dated sources record from what a company says about itself, gives each date as its source states it, and treats the palette and type shown here as our own interpretation rather than a reproduction of any sign, bag or logo.

A runway remark that became a mall name.

The Wet Seal identity starts with its name. It is two short words that began as a passing remark about a swimsuit, and it stayed in use as the business moved from a Newport Beach swim shop into the malls. The New York Times recorded the story in 2004 from the company’s own history, and the name went on to appear on mall shop fronts and, from 1999, a web address.

Around that name the company built a small family of retail brands. Arden B. took a different, more grown-up name for an older customer, while Blink by Wet Seal in 2010 borrowed the parent name for a smaller denim store. The acquisition of Contempo Casuals in 1995 brought in a third established mall name, which the company kept for several years before folding its stores into Arden B. and Wet Seal.

The look that went with the name was associated with the beach. The Times pointed to “signature bohemian tops and trendy jeans” in the early 2000s, and Gordon Brothers in 2017 spoke of a “surf-and-sun aesthetic” aimed at teenagers. Those descriptions are what the palette in this guide draws on: harbour water, surf and sun rather than any documented brand colour.

After the stores closed in 2017 the name became a piece of intellectual property in the hands of a branding firm. Gordon Brothers said at the time that it would rebuild and reposition the brand with a new business model.

For a design guide, Wet Seal shows how far a memorable name can carry a retail brand, from a single beach shop to a mall chain and on to an auction, and how a company can use separate names, such as Arden B., to reach an older customer alongside the original. Compare it with Contempo Casuals, the chain Wet Seal bought in 1995, and Gadzooks. For this guide we use harbor teal, surf aqua and sun gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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