Efforts by Beverly Hills, Calif., school officials to cash in on their community’s image of status and allure have borne fruit in a line of clothing bearing the Beverly Hills High School logo.
The clothes, which will soon appear in stores across the country, are the result of a highly unusual deal the district made a year ago, when it sold rights to the school’s name to the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
School officials say that the district, which will receive 60 percent of any profits generated by the clothing line, may make “several hundred thousand dollars” annually from the deal.
“There’s a mystique about Beverly Hills High School,” said a publicist for the project, Shannon M. Richey of Lucas Enterprises, Inc. “It’s an attitude, a lifestyle, and that’s exactly what we are portraying.”
Frank Fenton, a member of the Beverly Hills school board, said he got the idea for a line of clothing featuring the high’s logo after seeing unauthorized9lshirts bearing the school’s name.
“They were selling like hotcakes in Dallas,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘My God, we are that popular. Why don’t we do it ourselves?”’
The clothing was exhibited at a major retailing convention in Los Angeles last week.
Mr. Fenton said officials hoped to expand the use of the name to shoes, coffee mugs, stationery, pennants, and other items.
He stressed that the district retained veto power over use of the logo.
Beverly Hills is not the first school district to profit from clothing bearing its name. In early 1985, following the release of the movie “Beverly Hills Cop,” Detroit school officials were besieged with requests for “Mumford Phys. Ed. Dept.” T-shirts similar to those worn by Eddie Murphy in the movie.
