Some initials left out of fashion trend > Back To Resources Main

Only most popular letters make it onto ready-monogrammed goods
By LAURA STEELE -lsteele@journalsentinel.com

F is for frustrated Fionas, Felicitys and Faiths who can't get what they want: ready-monogrammed bags, sweaters, and T-shirts. Hannahs, Irenes and Nicoles say being shut out of this fashion trend is unfair. But retailers who don't want to be left holding the bag say it's just smart business.

If your name starts with A, J, K, L, M or S, you're in luck. Retailers know there are enough of you to stock cute pink gingham canvas initial bags with your initials on store shelves.

The rest of you can blame your parents for giving you a name that starts with a less popular initial. You'll have to find something else to accessorize that perfect summer dress because it's not worth it for manufacturers to produce and inventory your initial.

Shoe and accessory retailer Nine West offers customers handbags only with the initials A, B, C, D, E, J, K, L, M, R and S. Selling just the most popular letters allows the company to "offer more volume at a better price point and sell through more quantity versus having a residual inventory of letters that won't sell," said Irene Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for Nine West, which is owned by Jones Apparel Group Inc. of Bristol, Pa.

The 11 letters were chosen through an evaluation of last year's monogram initial bracelet and necklace sales. "We want to maximize sales on the most popular letters," Fitzgerald said.

Meanwhile, Marquette University junior Nicole Pokuta wishes that someone - anyone - would give her an N. But no one will.

"I'm not going to carry around an S when I'm an N," said Pokuta, who believes that her initial is not actually all that rare. "I found a shirt at Marshall Field's, but I don't want that. I want a bag . . . I go to the mall with my friends, and they're all M's and S's and A's. They pick up one of those purses and say, 'Oh my God this is so cute,' but I can't get one."

Even retail insiders such as Fitzgerald can't reverse the disenfranchisement of more than half the alphabet.

"I am an I, and they never make an I," Fitzgerald said. Nine West's logical corporate decision to dub only a few letters monogram-worthy made her own search even harder. She was not happy, and said so.

"I was totally busting on them for that. It's so unfair. Irene isn't even on the Richter scale," she said.

Profit-minded manufacturers are forced to orphan more than half the alphabet to slim down the risk that comes with selling personalized items. The expense of importing big volumes of low-priced designer knockoffs from China forces manufacturers to make only on the letters that they can bank on.

A basket full of picked-over monogrammed stationary at Broadway Paper, 191 N. Broadway, is proves the point. Only I, O, U, W, X, Y and Z were left. But at Goldi Inc., 4114 N Oakland Ave., store manager Kehri Stowers stocks enough variety that, she says, customers don't often have a hard time finding their initials on scarves, bracelets, handbags and jewelry.

To fit in with her Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters, Pokuta might have to go upscale. Neiman Marcus and other tony boutiques offer all 26 letters of the original JAM bags by Los Angeles designer Jana Feifer. Her design touched off the trend to begin with, a year and a half ago with a monogram initial product line that includes $27.50 coin purses and $595 duffel bags.

Frugal fashionistas with unpopular initials do have one alternative: Bags by Pinky, a Miami-based handbag manufacturer and wholesaler that sells small numbers of vinyl bags with the left-out monograms.

"If they're very polite about it, I'll make one just for them," said sales manager Seth Rand, who charges about $20 a purse.

The fate of today's monogram-hungry shoppers was inked on birth certificates in the 1970s. In 1978, the most popular baby names began with A, J, M and S, according to the Social Security Administration. While names starting with A, B, J, M and S remain constant in their popularity, E, H, T and R names don't begin to appear frequently until the early 1990s - with today's aspiring teens.

Sadly, they are facing their monogram destiny at an early age.

At Mayfair Mall's Club Libby Lu, retailer of all things pink, purple and sparkly, sales assistant Maribel Sanchez said the customers often ask her to look in the back room for the rhinestone visor, trucker cap, wallet or date book stitched with their initial. She then explains that everything the store carries is already out on the floor