How Beloved Boutique Union Is Building Its Own Brand
Chris Gibbs has a damn good eye, and he’s made a career out of it. The owner of much beloved, multi-label boutique Union LA—he got his start in the ‘90s at the now-defunct Manhattan location—Gibbs is widely regarded as one of the best when it comes to blending the worlds of high-fashion, streetwear, and anything else cool people with good taste want to wear. But despite nearly three decades of experience, creating his own label didn’t exactly come easy.
It was 2017, and Gibbs and his team had just opened a store in Japan. The store needed more products. And though Union had produced stuff like T-shirts and sweats in the past—“merch,” Gibbs calls it—this called for something a little more considered. “That's when we really started trying to make a collection,” he explains. “To make product for our stores—plural—rather than just merch for someone who happened to come by.”
It was a challenge, one that Gibbs says he’s still working his way through. “What’s maybe hard for people on the outside to understand is, although I have a history since '96 of working in the fashion industry, working at this storied store, and then later on taking it over, that’s almost exclusively buying other people’s stuff and selling it,” he explains. “There’s a whole other muscle that you need to make, produce, develop, market, distribute your own stuff.”
Then there’s the question of establishing a point of view. “I've had this freedom to curate this really eclectic store by cherry-picking the best of all these brands and putting it together in this beautiful way,” Gibbs says. “I’m proud of what we’ve done; not being put in a box has been something I'm very proud of. But one of the things I'm still struggling with is how we launch this brand and have a particular point of view that the consumer can be like, ‘Oh, Union. They make that.’”
One way in, Gibbs explains, is fit. For Union, that means cropped, boxy tops and somewhat slimmer—though by no means skinny—on the bottom. The spring 2024 leans into that silhouette throughout, pairing wide camp shirts and windbreakers with straight leg technical trousers and pleated chinos. The vibe is easygoing and approachable, but the details—a zipped pocket here, a bit of embroidery there—and high-end fabrication bring the offering well above the realm of “basic.”
Still, the idea isn’t to reinvent the wheel. “We want to do witty, creative takes on the classics,” Gibbs says. “We want to take inspiration from classic streetwear and expected pieces and offer something that’s a unique take on that, and I think that’s what we’re doing well so far.”
As the collection matures, the aim is to expand that sensibility and offer customers something that’s different enough to facilitate unimpeded self-expression while not veering so far out of its lane that it spooks folks who aren’t dedicated followers of fashion.
“We just want to make some cool shit, and then develop it over the course of time,” Gibbs says. “I hope we get that chance from the consumer.”
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