History of LA Air Line — POP ART / POP CULTURE

LA Air Line traces its roots back to Venice Beach California in 1971. This was a wonderful time to be in California. The creativity of the California culture at the time was changing the world. The Doors, Beach Boys, surf culture….. art, hippy, free love, marijuana, carefree fun Ilfestyle….. these all come to a persons mind when thinking of this time.

Dennis Maroney, founder of LA Air Line personifies this California culture. Although he was born in New York, his family moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old. He has lived here ever since.

After attending College at San Diego State University and majoring in Psychology, Dennis became restless and decided he did not want to miss the excitement of the times around him, with the carefree lifestyle. Inspired by Jack Kerouac “On the Road”, Dennis took off the next five years and traveled the entire USA by hitchhiking only. He kept track of how many rides he had been given by friendly drivers, but stopped counting when he reached his 10,000th ride! He would go out with some money, and when the money ran out, he would return to Los Angeles to work for a few months. Most of the work he had to do was hard manual labor. He would save all his money, living with friends to save on rent. Then he would go back out on the road for more adventure.

On one of his return trips to Los Angeles, he met a girl at a beach party. She had a friend who was looking to hire an airbrush artist. Dennis saw that this was a great chance to do some fun work, instead of hauling trash or other hard work. So he took a chance and told the employer that he was an art major in college. Fortunately, the employer did not check the school records, and did not discover the little lie. This man then taught Dennis how to airbrush.

Dennis learned more and more about the technique of airbrushing, and by the summer of 1971, he was making his own shirts at the Venice beach boardwalk and selling about 50 pieces a day. LA AIR LINE was born! 

Soon, Dennis’s work was discovered by people in the fashion business. These large companies started asking Dennis to make shirts for them too. Soon, Dennis was making shirts for all the big fashion brands in Los Angeles. He decided to open his first production factory in 1976. Sales kept growing and growing.

By 1984, (the year of Olympics in Los Angeles) LA Air Line was doing millions of garments a year……. ALL BY HAND! LA Air Line was now a star in the Los Angeles fashion industry. LA Air Line had such a good reputation, that it was awarded the first contract to make t-shirts for NASA and the new space shuttle program!

35 years since the beginning, LA Air Line is still going strong. It has supplied garments for almost every big clothing brand in the USA, including Trunk, True Religion, BCBG, BEBE, Phat Farm, Guess Jeans, Adriano Goldsmeid, BC Ethics, Bisou Bisou, DKNY, Hurley, Howe, Hustler, Ku USA, Levi Strauss, Lucky Brand, Marc Jacobs, Mudd Jeans, Osh Kosh, Pacific Sunwear, Quicksilver and Tommy Hilfiger.

Now, 35 years later, we are happy to announce that “LA Air Line”, the brand, is being born. Using 35 years of experience with the very roots of being in Los Angeles culture and years of experience individually painting garments BY HAND; LA Air Line will deliver to the customers this California cultural experience through its unique garments.