Fashions with a Divine spark

Stretching into the North Philadelphia skyline, dilapidated red-tinged sign and all, the Divine Lorraine is an eerily beautiful piece of the city's architectural history. But the building itself, says menswear designer Najeeb Sheikh, "is just the tip of the iceberg."

A Philadelphia native, Sheikh found out exactly how much significance the Divine Lorraine had within and outside the city when he began researching for the Divine Lorraine Hotel capsule collection. In collaboration with new menswear and sneaker boutique Lapstone & Hammer, owned by Brian Nadav, the collection seeks to embody the Divine Lorraine's 1950s and '60s hotel luxury.

It contains items such as four styles of Divine Lorraine-stitched Converse (high and low, black and cream), but not just any Converse - the 1970s luxury-model version of the Chuck Taylor All-Stars. Still, the collection sticks close to the hotel theme.

Sheikh designed a Divine Lorraine-stamped hotel room tray, monogrammed robes and towels, and even a stamped grooming kit. It's a two-part collection, Sheikh says. There are things you would find in a hotel gift shop - the T-shirts, crewnecks, a hat, a keychain - then, he jokes, items "that one would steal from a functioning hotel," including the tray, towel, robes, grooming kit, and a shoe-shining kit.

The launch event takes place at 7 p.m. Friday at Lapstone & Hammer (1106 Chestnut St.). There, shoppers can party, buy items from the collection, and enjoy a Divine Lorraine multimedia art exhibit featuring huge photos of the hotel's interior and a mini version of the Divine Lorraine's actual redesigned sign in the shop's 1,200-square-foot gallery space.

Because of immense national response, the limited-edition Divine Lorraine Hotel Collection also will be available in limited quantities online at lapstoneandhammer.com starting at 10 a.m. Friday.

There's no denying the Divine Lorraine, built in the 1890s on North Broad Street at Fairmount Avenue, is omnipresent.

"It's the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see on my way home," said Sheikh, who lives at 12th and Girard.

Plans are in the works to renovate the hulking historic high-rise, which is now vacant. Nadav says he reached out to the new owners of the building but ultimately they were not involved.

He says it's the history that really gave life to the project.

"The part that we really loved," says Nadav, "is that the Divine Lorraine was the first non-segregated, racially integrated luxury hotel in Philadelphia. It hits home with Philly being the City of Brotherly Love."

Father Divine, a spiritual leader and former owner of the building who died in 1965, has a somewhat clouded legacy of cult speculations and restrictive doctrine. But his primary focus, Nadav said, was originally peace. He created the International Peace Mission Movement, which Nadav says is still alive in some capacity today, and encouraged racial and gender equality. Nadav and Sheikh have been spreading that knowledge, spawned by the collection with literature ahead of the capsule's launch.

The two teamed with national brands such as Converse and Levi's for a jacket stitched with Sheikh's design of the hotel but also kept it local with a hat collaboration by local brand the Decades.

"People in N.Y.C. don't know the Divine Lorraine, but just hearing the concept, they think this is a really cool concept," Nadav says. When DJ Excel, originally from Philly and now living in Los Angeles, heard about the Divine Lorraine collection, he reached out and arranged to fly into town to play the launch event.

"We wanted to create a collection that would appeal to everyone," Sheikh says. "There're a lot of people that are really attached to this building."