ERIC’S BIG ADVENTURE

Driving down Turtle Creek Boulevard in his red 1964 Dodge Dart convertible on the way to 8.0, Eric Kimmel lights up a joint and adjusts the headset of his Walkman. His wild mane gently blows behind him as he sings to himself. Although it’s dusk and getting darker, he has on his snaaes, as black as Turkish coffee.

It is late 1992, but a freeze frame of Kimmel in the ’80s would reveal the same scene.

The soft, brown curls that tumble down to his shoulders are now streaked with flecks of gray. Kimmel’s hair has been his trademark since he was 7 years old, when after his first trip to the barbershop, he vowed never to cut it short again. Not for private Hebrew school, which he was kicked out of for refusing to trim his locks. And not in a French prison, where he recently spent almost 18 months for dealing drugs.

“Eric is 78 rpm in a 33 1/3 world,” laughs Shannon Wynne, owner of 8.0. “Did he turn over a new leaf in prison? No. It’s incredible to me that he is still alive.”

“You don’t mind if I smoke a joint, do you?” asks Kimmel, sitting barefoot on a gunmetal gray sofa in his Deep Ellum loft.

Eric lights up. The phone rings.

“Hello? Hi, Barry. Tonight, you and me and Swaney, we’re all going to rock ’n’ roll. You and me buddy. Randi is getting your jeans together for you. We didn’t get 300, we got 264 pair of painter pants…You won’t lose any money, you’ll make money. You’ll sell the denim ones for $20-S25 in your store, you bought those for three, the other ones you’ll dye or cut off into shorts. Of course. So what time tonight? OK, man. What are you wearing

tonight? What are you wearing now? Uh oh. Just checking. Just taking a fashion survey.”

He lights up a cigarette and gives a tour of his closet, a series of metal poles hanging horizontally by chains from the ceiling. “This is Thierry Mugler,” he says, tugging on the sleeve of a rich, inky-black jacket. “I love him. You can borrow it if you want to.”

Against the wall stands a row of vintage cowboy boots. He walks over to them, but instead grabs a black, thigh-high leather boot with thick silver zippers. “These are my favorites,” he says. “Jean Paul gave them to me.”

Gaultier?

“Yeah. It was a trade for an ad in Paris Haute.”

As the editor of the avant-garde fashion magazine Haute, Kimmel dazzled Dallas in the ’80s with his steely blue eyes and rakish charm. His reign abruptly ended after he cavorted his way to Paris where, instead of francs, he used Kimmel currency, little white pills called Heaven, to buy everything from cocktails to crepes, However, the French government preferred its own medium of exchange. Two years ago, he was released from a French prison. Now, he’s in the vintage clothing business with his family.

“Eric is a survivor,” says Michael Cerny, Dallas film director who’s known Kimmel since the mid-’80s and says there’s much more to him than his lounge lizard reputation. “He’ll make something out of nothing every time, and most of the time, it’ll be pretty cool.”

Throughout what he calls the “Haute years,” Kimmel sashayed his way past nightclub doormen and bill collectors without a care in the world. Back then, Kimmel’s life unfolded like a character from a Bret Easton Ellis novel-Dallas’ baddest boy was deeply entrenched in the decade of decadence, drugs and late-night dancing at anyplace that ended in “O,”

He did Dallas like no one had before. Each issue of Haute was reason enough for a fabulous fete. Although it was never published on schedule (“it came out fashionably late all the time,” says Kimmel, “whenever we sold enough ads to put it together”) and never turned a profit, no one, save for his unfortunate investors, seemed to mind-not the party revelers or the girls, girls, girls who hung on him like rock ’n’ roll groupies.

Kimmel’s cavalier attitude did not impede his ability to get exactly what he needed for the magazine-namely, adver tisers (“I can sell anything,” he says)- along with designers, photographers and models, all working for free. “When I met Eric, he was somebody who wielded power because he had a publication,” remembers Wynne. “And his frolicky, impish ways were all well and good. You couldn’t have asked for a better medium to be in than with Eric.”

When the first Haute rolled off the presses in 1982, there was nothing like it in Dallas. “Not only did we create a publication,” says Kimmel, “we had to create a market and create a need for it. Our goal with the magazine was never to make money. We never even thought about it. We just thought, hey, it would be great to do it.”

Even so, the magazine grew-from 32 to 120 pages-and was distributed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. as well as Dallas. But any money that was made was quickly doled out.

“One time, we spent $4,000 because I heard no one ever read the magazine, they just looked at the pictures, so I had all of my fashion done in four different languages so no one could understand it. Only the store names were in English,” says Kimmel.

“Haute was very forward,” says Dallas modeling agency head Kim Dawson. “I have always thought that Eric Kimmel had great ideas for a kid that didn’t know what he was doing and was doing it without any financing.”

Although Kimmel’s pockets were perpetually empty, he was never short on savvy. He traded ad space for drinks, designer suits and drugs, and was approached by investors wanting to buy into what Kimmel refers to as “that cool.” Kimmel says that it’s not his fault that there was no payback; he wasn’t a businessman, he was 23.

Local restaurateur Gene Street, who lost his $10,000 investment in Haute and once had venomous words to say about Kimmel and his publication, now lauds his efforts. “I put some money in Haute magazine, and it just didn’t work, and that’s all. It was informal as most of my deals are. If we had a contract, I don’t even remember it. We did a pay and trade thing. I had SRO and a lot of restaurants, but he didn’t run off owing me money. I think Eric was an honest guy. He was young and impetuous and not into the business end of things. I don’t think he intentionally harmed anybody.”

Even so, the two haven’t spoken since 1987.

But Kimmel would rather not discuss Gene Street, their fallout, or any other of the disgruntled investors in Haute. He is, in fact, tired of talking about the negative press his caddish reputation fostered throughout much of the ’80s.

“People don’t acknowledge all of the hard work and all of the passion that we tad in trying to promote Dallas,” he says. ’Haute magazine totally glamorized Dallas; we never wrote anything negative. People don’t write about the things that we did that were positive because we made it look so easy.”

Besides Haute, Rimmel also produced a coffee-table book with photographer Kent Barker for the Dallas Ballet: two SMU coed calendars; Haute Society, a book he put together with local partymeister Ann Draper; At Nite, a guide to Dallas night life; Dallas Print, a fashion industry book of photographers, models and illustrators; and a magazine for the Dallas Apparel Mart, called Runway Dallas. In addition, he had a monthly section in Park Cities People called “Haute Couture,” and a column in the Dallas Times Herald weekly “Style” section.

However, by the late ’80s, Dallas’ golden years were beginning to fade. And so was Kimmel’s enthusiasm for Haute. “The economy was sucking…it was no more fun. Dallas was dead.”

So, in the spring of 1988, when the owner of a new clothing store called Beaubourg asked Kimrnel how to repay him for organizing a grand opening party, Kimrnel simply replied. ’Take me to Paris.”

“I thought, brainstorm,” says Kimmel. “I already had a French name-Haute-and I’ll do the magazine in English in Paris and sell it all over the world.” The publication would be called Paris Haute.

Kimmel packed his toothbrush and designer duds, and was off, determined to set the City of Lights on fire.

But before his new Haute had a chance to be hot, Dallas’ King of Cool found himself on ice. Two weeks after the launching of his new magazine, with a star-studded soiree (including Philippe Starck and Roman Polanski) at the hippest, hottest nightclub in Paris-Les Bains-Kimrnel found himself handcuffed and in a Paris jail.

Within hours, he was sent to a prison in Limoges, a small town in southwest France. Kimrnel was the only American prisoner there. When he arrived, he did not speak a word of French. He would await trial from a prison cell.

He was charged with importing and selling Heaven, an Ecstacy copycat drug, which at the time was not illegal, but French authorities mistook the pills for the real thing. The French media reported it as the biggest Ecstacy bust the country had ever seen-his bail was set for $200,000. Kimmel says the Ecstacy charge was bogus and that by the time he went to trial nine months later, the French government had enacted a law making Heaven illegal. Eric was joined by his mother in Paris for the trial proceedings, which he insisted on seeing through despite the advice of his family, his attorney and the American embassy, which felt he should simply leave the country and never return. Kimmel pleaded guilty and received a five-year sentence-two years in prison and three years probation. He was released on good behavior after 10 months.

“I knew I was being ragged, and people said I deserved being in jail, because I’ve been a wild ass.” he says. “So I thought I should stay for the trial because no one else would have.”

But prison for Eric wasn’t exactly something out of Midnight Express. In fact. Kimmel’ s mother, who visited him in prison six limes, describes the facility as more like a home for troubled boys.

Each morning. Eric put on his jogging suit and exercised to the sounds of Phil Collins, Elton John and Sting. Then, he’d smoke a few blondes (cigarettes), have hot chocolate, coffee cake and yogurt and get ready for school, dressing up in one of his many outfits (he changed clothes three times a day).

Every month Kimmel’s family sent $300 Co his prison account, which allowed him to buy cable television, a radio with a cassette player, tapes, canons of cigarettes, fiuit, candy, couscous and two beers a day.

He sunbathed during the prisoner’s promenades and played music from his cell window like a DJ during soccer matches, with the inmates requesting songs from his collection. When he needed supplies-scissors, glue and paper-he says he simply stole them. He also claims to have smoked five joints of hash a day while in prison. He giggles: “What were they going to do, arrest me?”

For all of his chicanery, Kimmel was a popular prisoner. He gave away his beer and cigarettes and outfitted the prison soccer players in the Dallas Cowboys T-shirts that his mother sent him. “Le Texan” also did something that had never been done before-he puhlished a magazine in prison. A collection of 20 prisoners’ handwritten poems. letters and drawings about women, the publication was called Haute Mama.

With prison bar stripes on the cover in the signature black-and-white reversed-out type-style Kimmel used for the other Hautes, the magazine had a slick graphic feel on the outside. But unlike the others, this Haute was filled with something real, not trade-out ads for boots and bar tabs. The June 1989 issue, publshed just before he went to trial, was dedicated to “une wild red head, elle est belle, funny et independante [sic] as hell”-his mother, who wrote to him every day.

“It’s the best thing I ever did.” says Kimmel.

Haute Mama was paid for by the French government and distributed to all of the judges and ministers of culture in the country. At his trial. Kimmel received a reduced sentence, in part, because of Haute Mama. Kimmel views his prison experience without regrets. “I think everyone should spend a month in prison because you really get a chance to see what you can do when you’re all alone. Most people can’t hang out alone, you know. People go through problems and they’re like free, but they’re still in prison. You just can’t see the bars.”

SOFT BLUE HILLS OF DENIM COVER the dusty wooden floor of ReDenim. the recycled denim and vintage clothing business Kimmel owns with his brother Bret and sisters Randi and Nikki. He walks past a silver grocery cart overflowing with used jeans, jackets and shirts, ready to be sorted and graded.

Randi is counting jeans to be shipped to Japan. Nikki is boxing them up. “It’s nice to know I can come out of a bad experience and be in a recession and still rock ’n’ roll,” says Kimmel. stepping over a pile of patched and decorated jeans. “It’s nice to know I don’t have to change anything except my underwear.”

“When you wear them,” laughs Randi.

“1 love the fact that I was the first to do a fashion magazine in Dallas, and I love being the first always. And to come out of prison and hit a trend right before anyone else does is a great deal–we got in just at the right time, just before it really hit big. Now vintage clothing is the hottest thing.”

Prison, in fact, was the inspiration for Re. Even the company name is a term he learned in the slammer-slang for recycled.

One of Kimmel’s favorite souvenirs from prison is a denim jacket that he got from one of the guards and that he decorated with inmate memorabilia-pieces of neon-colored toothbrushes, clamshells and chicken bones. Across the back, painted in bold, black brushstrokes is Octobre 6 1988 a Juin 27 1989, the dates that he was arrested and released from Limoges prison, before his trial.

“1 was gonna write this book when 1 got out, but once I started watching Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue, every prisoner in the world was writing a book,” says Kimmel. “So I thought if I started a business and made money, then, if I wanted to do the book I would because I wanted to- not because that’s all I had to offer.”

Over New Year’s Eve dinner at Celebration with his family two years ago, Kimmel asked his younger brother Bret, who is in the Army surplus clothing business, if he could find some old denim jackets for him to decorate. Kimmel says his original idea was to use them to raise money for charities, “like the homeless or something.” Bret agreed and bought 30 jackets for $250. but before Eric could get out his paint and glue, he sold them to Wearabout The Factory, a Dallas clothing store. The owner of Wearabout then asked Kimmel if he could find him 500 pairs of used jeans. Of course, said Eric. From there, the business grew.

Eight months later Eric and Bret had filled a 26.000-square-foot warehouse with over 100 tons of denim jeans, jackets, shirts and vintage clothing, and were selling to stores in the U.S., France, Germany. England and Japan. Eric continued to travel across the country looking for clothing to buy; Bret handled the finances. Soon, they brought in their sisters-Nikki, 31, to work with clients and Randi, 28, to fill the orders and run the warehouse.

Now. almost 200 retail outlets worldwide carry ReDenim-including The Gazebo, Stanley Korshak and Patricia Field in New York. Seventeen magazine is featuring Re’s cut-off, decorated shorts in its February issue; the Fly Girls on the television show, “Living Color” wear them, too.

The Japanese are some of Re’s best customers; photos of Eric mugging with Tokyo retailers dot the wall of a downstairs office. When a Japanese businessman arrived in Dallas last year. Kimmel invited him to stay with him in his loft. He slept on Eric’s futon, went to the Mesquite Rodeo and ate Texas-sized steaks at Trail Dust with Kimmel and his family. Before leaving for the Orient, he handed Kimmel a $30,000 order for recycled denim shins, jackets, vests, jeans and overalls.

Although Eric says he always knew the family would be in business together. Bret says the success of Re-he estimates 1992 sales at over$l million-still amazes him.

“Eric’s always thinking about the business-what can we do to grow bigger and what can we do with what we have and make money on it. He’s business. That’s surprising, isn’t it? 1 always thought Eric just wanted to go out and have fun and didn’t take life seriously.”

“Perhaps the Eric of the ’90s has grown up a bit,” says Shelle Bagot, owner of The Gazebo. “I’m not surprised that he’s successful. He’s obviously working hard and he’s a smart man. I think he’s very bright and creative.”

Besides vintage clothing and recycled denim. Re sells leather and suede and “any kind of Americana–old signs, lighters, comic books,” which Kimmel picks up at flea markets. Re also plans to get into the denim manufacturing business-to make reproductions of classic jeans, jackets and shirts-and add children’s clothing to the line of vintage wear.

Barry Adler, owner of Wearabout, doesn’t doubt that Re will continue to be a success. “I wouldn’t do business with him if we weren’t making money [from Re merchandise]. Eric’s main asset is his eye and his feel for something that is going to happen. For the amount of time those guys have been in business and the type of business they’re in. they’re doing very, very well. Under normal circumstances, it would take five years to get where they are. Right now, they’re stepping on the toes of the biggest vintage dealers in America, who’ve been in business 15 to 20 years.”

“Certain things are important to you at certain times. The magazine worked for what I wanted at that time, but I didn’t make any money and now 1 want to make money,” says Kimmel, who lives above the business and takes only a minimal salary, while he repays his parents for the money they sent him in prison.

Eric grew up in an upper middle-class North Dallas family. His mother, Zelda, remembers him as a precocious child, very creative and with an early flair for fashion. “When Eric was 3, all of the salespeople at Neiman’s used to comment that he would be in the dressing room for two hours trying on clothes,” she says.

He excelled in art classes, but was an average student, more interested in work than school. While at Hillcrest High School. Kimmel worked at a NorthPark men’s clothing store called Chelsea Row. When the 16-year-old noticed that most of his customers were buying clothes to wear to dance in instead of for work, he made the connection between nightlife and fashion.

By night, Kimmel was sneaking with his best friend into bars-Beggars. Madcap Molly’s, No. 3 Lift and Elan-and by day, he was planning on how to make fashion his forte. After he graduated from high school, Kimmel attended Richland College for a semester, dropped out, then enrolled in El Centro’s fashion design program. Six months later, Kimmel quit El Centro, when he found out they didn’t teach menswear design. Within months, he was designing his own line of menswear for his own store, Eric Kimmel Designs on lower Greenville Avenue. When the money ran out. he was already at work on another idea-Haute magazine.

But whatever Kimmel was doing, his mother says she always knew he would be a success. “Eric never knew he couldn’t do anything,” she says, “he just went out and did it.”



ET’S DO A CONTINENTAL night,” says Eric to his brother and sisters, all gathered at his loft on a Sunday evening. “First, we’ll do an Italian thing- how’s Sfuzzi sound?-and then, Spanish, we can go dancing at Eduardo’s-and then something French, like an espresso or something.”

Randi hops into the front seat of Eric’s convertible.

“Show tunes!” Randi exclaims, and the two of them laugh. The radio in his car doesn’t work, and they break into song.

They arrive at Sfuzzi a few minutes later, where the rest of the group is already seated. Eric moans that all of the good spots for people-watching have been taken, and sits at the head of the table.

“Let’s get a Ridiculous Bellini and share it,” Eric says to Randi. The enormous. frosty orange drink arrives with a pair of 2-foot long straws bobbing out of the top. “Let’s see if we can make it go down 2 inches,” says Eric. “Get your straw. OK, go!”

Eric laughs and lights up a cigarette. Then, he orders pizzas for the table.

Later. Eric explains that his sister Nikki, who was treated for leukemia a year and a half ago, has gotten some bad news from her doctor. “What does this mean?” he asks somberly, already knowing the answer. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“That’s why you’ve got to live each day like it’s your last,” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette.