photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Owner Brandon Angeles shows off a collection of Jayhawk and Chiefs vintage clothing at his new shop, Lost Angeles, 725 Massachusetts St.

The sign on the new boutique in downtown Lawrence doesn’t read “The Twilight Zone,” but an odd phenomenon tends to happen when a father and his college-age son walk through the door: They both think the clothes are hip.

That’s the vintage athletic apparel market for you. A shop full of 1980s/1990s gear is going to appeal to the dad who wore those items when they were new, but in a fashion-world twist, those same items now are among the hottest trends among teenagers and 20-somethings who take their cues from entertainers wearing retro merchandise.

The result in Lawrence is Lost Angeles, a new shop at 725 Massachusetts St. that has a heavy focus on retro KU Jayhawk merchandise, including old T-shirts, hats, jackets and other items.

“Our oldest pieces right now are from the 1988 championship,” owner Brandon Angeles said. “Basically, every time we go to the Final Four, we have pieces from it.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A shirt from KU’s 1988 National Championship season at the Lost Angeles vintage apparel shop in downtown Lawrence is pictured.

Angeles said college students love the vintage merchandise, but KU alumni also have been a big part of the customer base. In this town, if you can get students and alumni, you have a pretty big customer base.

“It has been crazy,” Angeles said of the store’s early reception, after opening last week. “On opening day, we had 25 to 30 people waiting outside in the cold for us to open.”

Now, the challenge is finding the vintage items to sell. The business doesn’t really rely on area KU fans bringing in their old gear to sell. Instead, Angeles wants to get KU gear from places where it isn’t as highly appreciated and bring it to Lawrence where it can become “a must-have” item. Angeles said that means he has built up a network of suppliers from “New York to L.A.” that sell him KU merchandise in mint or near-mint condition.

“We get a lot from L.A. and San Diego,” he said. “It is random, but helpful.”

While a lot of the gear is KU basketball-oriented, not all of it is. Angeles gets his hands on rarer items like a 1990s KU swim team shirt, or golf shirts that were made for the KU golf team in the 1990s. The rack this week also included T-shirts from KU’s past appearances in the Aloha Bowl in the 1990s.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Brandon Angeles, owner of the Lost Angeles vintage apparel shop in downtown Lawrence, looks at a KU football shirt from the 1995 Aloha Bowl.

But, of course, the old-style KU Final Four shirts, especially from the Roy Williams era, are in high demand. Angeles said one of the most popular — and tougher to find shirts — is from the 1993 Final Four when Williams and the KU squad made headlines after Williams had his team spit in the Mississippi River en route to the Final Four in New Orleans. That superstition-fueled outing produced a number of T-shirts.

“We do get those, and when we get them, they go quick,” Angeles said.

One other unusual sight you will see on the racks: KU apparel that has no connection to Adidas. The shop gets lots of items that predate KU Athletics’ sponsorship deal with Adidas. That means the store has a section devoted to KU gear made by Nike, which Angeles said is popular.

“I don’t have people coming in saying they wished we had more Adidas stuff,” Angeles said. “They’re saying that we miss Nike.”

The shop also has a section of vintage clothing devoted to Kansas City Chiefs apparel, and the racks will include some occasional merchandise from other teams.

Despite its name, the shop doesn’t spend any time focusing on Los Angeles teams. Instead, the name is a play on the owner’s last name. He added “Lost” to the name because he likes the idea of finding “lost” pieces of merchandise and bringing them back to the team’s fanbase, he said.

“At this point, they really are like one-of-a-kind pieces,” he said of the older items.

•••

Talk about your Twilight Zone-type of scenes, perhaps one of them would be KU men’s basketball players becoming regulars at a women’s clothing boutique in downtown. That was beginning to happen before Angeles opened Lost Angeles earlier this month.

Angeles has been selling vintage athletic apparel for about five years, and most recently had a space inside Chronic Sunshine, a women’s clothing boutique that focuses on fun, colorful women’s apparel in downtown Lawrence.

When KU men’s basketball players started regularly coming to the women’s clothing store to check out the vintage KU gear, that was a sign that the merchandise could support its own space, Angeles said.

But Lost Angeles and Chronic Sunshine are still very much connected. Angeles is engaged to Chronic Sunshine’s founder, Melissa Garcia, whom I wrote about in June. Garcia has since opened another boutique in downtown Lawrence. Remi Girl opened late last year at 714 Massachusetts St. It also focuses on women’s clothing, but with a style that is a bit more luxurious and features more neutral colors, Garcia said.

The couple is now operating three stores on Massachusetts Street, and that is after recently having moved to Lawrence from Garden City, where Garcia grew up in the retail business. Garcia said she has been impressed with Massachusetts Street, but she also felt like more could be done to engage shoppers for a longer period.

“We really wanted to keep people on Mass. Street,” Garcia said. “We started thinking about what else can we put on Mass. to keep them on the street. We decided to do something we already know how to do.”

Having three stores in the same district creates some efficiencies, and it allows the stores to share some shoppers. She said she and Brandon may not yet be done with the idea of trying to build scale in downtown Lawrence.

“I feel like Brandon and I are just getting started,” she said. “This is just us getting our foot in the door. Brandon and I are risk-takers. We are not scared to jump in.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Remi Girl is a new women’s clothing shop at 714 Massachusetts St.