The saga of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was captured on Friday (January 8) in Mexico, is a good fit for one Los Angeles clothing company.
Guzman was photographed in a shirt from apparel firm Barabas shaking hands with Sean Penn in an image accompanying the actor’s recent Rolling Stone article about the fugitive.
Barabas quickly capitalized on the drug kingpin’s taste for the abstract-design shirt that features bright blue stripes, posting on its Facebook page, “EL CHAPO GUZMAN WEARING BARABAS SHIRT!”
Later, the firm said in another post that high traffic had temporarily crashed its website, Barabasmen.com
On Wednesday, the website was back up, with side-by-side photos of the Guzman-Penn meeting, and a handsomely coiffed male model in the same Barabas shirt. “Most wanted shirt,” read a caption under the pictures.
“El Chapo Guzman, he is a rich man, we are not affiliated, we are just fashion design, we are not affiliated with any of his business, we don’t know him or whoever this guy is,” Barabas own Sam Esteghball.
“He (El Chapo) had a lot of choices for that interview to wear any other brand like the other news said ‘it’s not Cavalli, it’s not Versace, it’s Barabas,’ and that makes us happy that he could spend five-thousand dollars on a shirt, it wasn’t the money, it wasn’t the price, it was the design which catches his eye,” he added.
Esteghball said he had did not know where Guzman bought the shirt.
“Currently we have 5,000 customers; the boutiques, franchises, websites that they buy from, we are wholesalers and he could have buy it from the online, he could buy it, I don’t know, in any stores, any boutiques. We have a lot of customers in Mexico, we go to the show in Mexico. So it could be anywhere that he bought the shirt. I have no idea how he got it or find it but it’s ours and he is wearing it in Rolling Stone,” said Esteghball.
The shirt, which has a retail price of $130, is reportedly now sold out because of the spike in demand following the Rolling Stone article.
Mexico’s government says it plans to extradite Guzman to the United States, where he is wanted on charges including drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder. (Reuters)
