Milk Bar finds its fashion niche on High Street

Charlie Mars-Mahla/The Lantern Milk Bar employee Eric Hayes displays a Jacket by designer Red Clay. The piece is hand tailored and retails for $250.

In one of the opening scenes of "A Clockwork Orange," the bad guys go to the local milk bar and drink drug-laced dairy products.

This was the inspiration for three local entrepreneurs who recently opened the Milk Bar, a unique clothing boutique in the Short North.

While many boutiques tend to cater toward one street, fashion consists of many avenues. Milk Bar offers more than urban street wear, it provides dressy to casual clothing, showcases the individuality of fashion and bills itself as a "society for fashionable savages."

Milk Bar is the creation of three young black men: Eric Hayes, a Capital University graduate, Kareem Jackson, an Ohio State graduate, and Kani Brown, an OSU student. Brown said, the three hope to show other young blacks that it is possible to do big things.

"We prove it," Brown said.

Brown and Hayes were introduced by a DJ at a party. Shortly after they realized they shared the same ideas about fashion, music and business, not to mention their random distribution of denim.

The two put together an idea to sell clothing professionally.

Brown said he mentioned this thought to a friend and a meeting with Jackson was set up. "After that it was clockwork," said Hayes, who has a bachelor's degree in music and music business with a minor in public relations.

Although business is booming, the three faced plenty of adversity while trying to open Milk Bar. The entire process of opening the boutique took about one year, Brown said.

"Banks wouldn't give us any money," Hayes said. "Age discrimination was a big issue. We literally went up and down High Street looking for properties and no one wanted to rent to us or give us any money because we were young." "On the other hand, education was extremely important throughout this process," said Jackson, an OSU strategic communications graduate.

"But once we got our money it seriously only took one month," Brown said.

Milk Bar is trying to incorporate more aspects of clothing into Columbus by finding things the city does not have but that its people would love. For this reason, Milk Bar carries more independent brands such as Hellz Bellz, Lifetime Collective, Dark horse, Insight 51, Brixton, exclusive Colab Eyewear and locally designed Homage.

"We want to take what Columbus already has to offer and add to it, whether it be fashion, music, or culture," Brown said. For instance, Milk Bar held the "Columbus Is Fashion" on Saturday at the Bar of Modern Art. Next, it will host a dance party called "Get Right" that will be held every first Friday of the month at the Cove Lounge. Milk Bar has an event for every Gallery Hop in the Short North. Brown, Hayes and Jackson have a listening party to showcase six local artists called "Six artists, six iPODs."

"Everybody wants to be a part of something so we gave it to them," Brown said. "A society of fashionable savages."

Milk Bar is located at 1203 N. High St.

Danielle Meadows can be reached at meadows.107@osu.edu.