Yoko Devereaux is not an actual person.
Rather, it is the brainchild of Andy Salzer, a 34-year-old Seattle native who’s made a home and prosperous fashion design company — now celebrating its fifth year — in Williamsburg.
“Andy Salzer as a brand name doesn’t connote any kind of imagery,” he said of his menswear label’s moniker, which is a riff on the prestige one hoped to buy into with designer jeans of the ’80s (think Gloria Vanderbilt). “Devereaux is like southern American, old French money, which I love, but I wanted it to be more international, hence Yoko: a very common Japanese girl’s name. The imagery is this woman who is so lovely and so jet set.”
Of course there’s been much ado about Williamsburg in recent years, what with the neighborhood’s main export being youth culture and trends that resonate well beyond the 11211 ZIP code.
“Seeing Williamsburg grow went hand in hand with the general movement in design: A similar thing was going on with art and fashion and music,” said Salzer, who has clothed local rock heroes Scissor Sisters and The Rapture. “All these different worlds were colliding into each other, and a lot of people were utilizing fashion to get their message out, even if they weren’t traditional designers.”
Salzer, whose educational background is in art history, accumulated his work experience — prior to the six years he’s spent on the brand — around successful retail ventures in Seattle and online. Without formal design training, his clothes are all about ideas; he says that he knows what people want.
“It used to be, men either wore vintage, jeans and T-shirts, or Dior and Helmut Lang,” he said. “There was no streetwear that wasn’t hip-hop oriented, so my brand fell into where there was a lack.”
What started out as an artist’s collaboration, with silk-screened tees and sweatshirts, has become a full line of menswear. The most succinct way to describe the niche he’s born is high-end streetwear.
“I draw a lot of inspiration off the rock ’n’ roll and indie scenes,” said Salzer. “Yoko Devereaux was a hipster brand before people started throwing that word around constantly.”
Yoko Devereaux’s signature garment is a three-piece suit made of sweatshirt-soft fleece or jersey.
“I pay a lot of attention to fit and tailoring structure, but I try not to use traditional fabrics that tend to be constricting, like what your father would wear,” said Salzer. “Skaters are a huge part of my market. It’s for the guy who’s worn a hoodie for 10 years and now is 25 and has a job and a girlfriend.”
But it isn’t for L-train denizens alone. With retail accounts from Colette in Paris to Fred Segal in LA, he’s as likely to see his designs on the backs of his neighbors as he is on uptown and international types.
“I do really well at Saks,” he said of his section on the seventh floor of the luxury retail behemoth. “That says more to me about the kind of guy who lives uptown, who not so much tries to buy into it, but wants to experience the Brooklyn thing, because there’s a cachet and masculine raw beauty about guys in the Brooklyn scene. The brand’s sensibility is very Brooklyn.”
A decent walk from the hipster haven that is that plum stretch of Bedford Avenue surrounding the subway stop, Salzer set up shop one year ago on Broadway in Southside Williamsburg.
“People were like, ‘I can’t believe you’re going to open up a store over here,’ ” he recalled. “This neighborhood is more coming than up, and if I didn’t have a wholesale component, hadn’t been doing this for a while, and was just opening up a shop, I don’t know if it would’ve worked.”
So why not that well-treaded path of the Northside, Bedford Avenue?
“I love the Southside more because I’m convinced — I have this conspiracy theory — that Urban Outfitters owns the other side,” joked Salzer. “Over here, the architecture is more interesting, like the Gretsch building, and I love the elevated train — it feels very ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ It still feels like Brooklyn over here: not too gentrified, with Hasidic meets Latin meets hipster, which you can’t get anymore unless you go far out into Brooklyn.”
On Jan. 12, Salzer celebrated his shop’s one-year anniversary. With its interior made of an illuminated wall of silkscreens from past artist collaborations, vintage wallpaper, military-inspired fixtures and raw brick accents to house his full collection — as well as a complementary women’s line from H. Fredriksson — Salzer’s slice of Broadway is becoming a fashion destination. New wholesale offices and storefronts are expected in the coming year from the The KDU (Keystone Design Union), a group which includes The Royal Magazine, to the clothing line Savant and Mishka NYC, a label similar to Yoko that is also sold to Collette in Paris.
With his line for sale in over 70 stores around the world, Salzer shows no signs of slowing.
“It’s crazy to think I’ve been doing something for six years,” mused Salzer. “Have you ever done something or even just lived in the same place for that long? Every time I think Yoko has plateaued, 10 new doors fly open. It gets bigger all the time, and that’s a pretty amazing thing.”
Yoko Devereaux, located at 338 Broadway between Rodney and Keap streets in Williamsburg, is open Wednesday through Saturday, from noon until 8 pm, and on Sundays, from noon until 6 pm. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. A sample sale is starting on the evening of Jan. 12 and running through Jan. 14 with giveaways and discounts on this season’s designs. For more information, call (718) 302-1450 or visit their Web site at www.yokod.com.