LUX Flourishes

- by Jon Devin

“It’s all about the booty,” says Tadd Feazell, owner of Memphis’ urban fashion hot spot, LUX. “If you can make that look good, you can make everything else look good too,” he continues.

LUX and Feazell made a splash in the Memphis fashion scene in September 2004. Two and a half years later, Feazell has found that alongside designer tops and accessories, high-end name-brand jeans that show off the posterior play a pivotal role in a person’s overall image.

Brands like Diesel, Farmer, Earl, and his newest acquisition, True Religion, shape the derriere, he explained, with a tight fit and smoothness to a body’s natural curves. With prices ranging from $150 to $400 one might think that the jeans would create a tight fit on a wallet as well, but no matter, says Feazell. The jeans sell.

“You’re going to get noticed wearing these jeans,” he says. Feazell chose a converted 1920s cottage at 906 South Cooper St. in the heart of Memphis’ Cooper-Young Historic District to show off his flashy wares. It was a first for retail in an area known for trendy dining. However, since the opening of LUX, three other independent retail clothing stores have borrowed off his success and become his neighbors.

Originally occupying only the front room of the powder blue cottage, LUX has expanded twice to fill the entire building giving him 2,200 square feet of retail space. Ladies’ clothes are located in the front room while men’s metrosexual wear has been moved to the newer rooms in the back.

Feazell, a Memphis transplant from Corinth, Miss., relies on his own taste and fashion sense when choosing his stock, noting that trends usually start on television and in magazines. He and his staff work hard at portraying the image they sell as well. The biggest compliment, he says, is when someone comes into the store and says “I want to look just like you.”

A veteran of retail fashion, Feazell remembered starting in the business of retail clothing sales at the age of 15, knowing even then that someday he wanted to work for himself.

“I’ve just always known what I wanted to do and now I’m doing it,” he says. “I thought, I can do this,” he recalls, “And when I finally got the nerve, it was off.”

Along the way to attaining his dream, Feazell studied business at Ole Miss before moving to Memphis in 1998 as a manager for American Eagle. He worked there and in other clothing stores over the course of six years before taking the leap of faith which led to creating and owning LUX. Feazell also spent some time studying at the University of Memphis.

What was missing in Memphis fashions, he says, was an edge, especially in men’s sports and casual wear. He noted that high-end retail chains like Banana Republic and Abercrombie and Fitch also sell flatteringly tight, men’s clothes, but they stop short of the edge that Feazell describes as his specialty. So when he goes to wholesale markets, he looks for the clothes that most retailers are too nervous to buy.

Now he’s creating an edge for his own benefit.

LUX customers often come in looking for one specific item but end up being transformed in a LUX-style, custom-made makeover. “I love making people over,” Feazell says.

And he’s had plenty of customers to makeover. In the last year LUX has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Northwest Airlines Magazine, and the Business section of The Commerical Appeal. Customers, he noted, are generally young - in their late teens or twenties. But more and more 40- to 50-year-olds are checking into the hip-style scene as well creating quite a customer base for LUX’s clubwear. With business booming, Feazell is now busily awaiting the July 2007 debut of his online store at www.luxmemphis.com, and hopes to someday bring LUX to prospective locales in East Memphis, Nashville and Louisville, KY.

Feazell has high hopes for his online sales. After the Cosmopolitan article came out people all over the country began calling to order clothes - especially the jeans. He credits a lot of initial success to the great coverage.

So what else can you find at LUX? In addition to Feazell’s favorite jeans, he offers brightly colored casual tops for ladies in hues of aqua, lime, and orange - some with fringe, spaghetti straps, halter tops or off-the-shoulder skin appeal. Racks of bold earrings, leather braid wristlets and pendants adorn the counter. For men, name-brand tees and muscle shirts offer a relaxed look while athletic-cut striped or solid button-downs afford an edgy-yet-formal look when thrown over the prized jeans.

If anything let Feazell know that he was on the right track, it was the surprise he got last Christmas when cousins of Lisa Marie Presley stopped by LUX to purchase gifts for Lisa and her family. You know you dress like a rock star when the rock stars come to you for their clothes.

Feazell says he wouldn’t have made such an instant success without the help of his friends - too many to name, he says - who helped him get started with gifts of everything from his front door awning to his satellite radio subscription. The support of good friends coupled with childhood dreams spelled success for Feazell, and booties in Memphis will never be the same.