FASHION Boutique owner makes menswear into art

Pepi Gonzalez mixes real art with the art of fashion.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI -- On a warm Saturday morning when most men sport flip-flops and shorts, Pepi "Bertini" Gonzalez dresses.
A white Canali button-down brightened by orange and eggshell-blue windowpane checks. A big-knot, zoot-suit short, Canali tie double stitched in orange with a bohemian lattice of flowers. Creaseless navy Zanella pants cinched by a vintage alligator belt. Bresciani navy socks tucked in Bruno Magli bench-made penny loafers. Annoyed by a stray thread on his tie, Gonzalez twists and folds it out of sight, showing off custom-made gray pearl cuff links.
Such serious fashion accomplishment might suggest Gonzalez is a serious guy. Not exactly.
"We want a happy ambience here!" he exclaims of his men's clothing boutique, Pepi Bertini, on Coral Gables, Fla.'s Miracle Mile. "This is a show, it really is."
He speed-walks to the rear of the store and back again. Reaching to adjust a mannequin, he twirls around 90 degrees to head for a nearby building. He bounces up several flights of stairs and bursts into rooms where tailors work on the finest menswear in the world, including Gonzalez's own label.
"Everything must be happy. If I am not happy, if I do not smile, then the customers will not buy a ticket to come see the show, you understand?"
History
For 10 years, Gonzalez has outfitted men who demand perfection, sometimes with very loud tantrums. Men who would recognize Canali or Casual Male blindfolded based solely on how the fabric feels in their moisturized palms.
Men like Oscar Feldenkreis, president of Perry Ellis International. Secure enough to wear pink, Feldenkreis brings along his dog, a Maltese named Sushi (who favors pink collars), to pick up Daddy's basics: six $2,000 Canali suits, a gaggle of Canali ties in firecracker shades and enough custom-made shirts to clothe the Miami Dolphins roster.
"Bottom line," says Feldenkreis. "Pepi knows clothes are art."
Gonzalez also knows art, naming his own clothing company Modigliani for the Italian painter and sculptor and selling works by artists he admires. A self-described "deal hunter," he's constantly looking for images that stir him -- a Venetian street painter's work, a movie print in Manhattan's Soho, a figurine in a Kendall supermarket.
Feldenkreis has bought nine paintings from Gonzalez.
"I am not a middleman or a dealer," the clothier says. "If someone is in the store and they like something, then I tell the artist about the customer and the customer about the artist. Galleries, you know, they make people uncomfortable. Here they have a friendly place, no pressures."
Several Jesus Fuertes paintings hang at Pepi Bertini, their cubist lines accenting a display of Xacus shirts cut in trendy, slimming lines. The Cuban painter's works usually sell for $40,000 and up. Not far from a Fuertes sits a ceramic cat bought at Publix for $15.
"Pepi has a sensibility, a feeling, for how things should go together," said Fuertes, who met Gonzalez when the clothier made him shirts 10 years ago.
Fuertes has since created paintings for the shop, including a 6-by-3-foot pop-art-inspired red heart for a Valentine's Day window.
Pampering
It's no wonder clients grow attached. Gonzalez goes out of his way to pamper them. Knowing that no one who buys $300 shirts wants to trust them to Joe Cleaner Down the Street, he offers hand laundry for all the shirts he sells.
Gonzalez is also known for tending to his clients individually, locking the door and serving food and wine while they peruse the racks.
"I won't go anywhere else," Feldenkreis says. (It's Bertini for dress; casual days are all Ellis, of course.)
Gonzalez manipulates his windows as if they were installations. Always theme-conscious, a recent window was deliberately whimsical with a political undercurrent. American and British flags faced one another defiantly, drawing the eye to symbols of national pride -- baseball and cricket -- competing on separate stages.
"All men are boys," said Gonzalez. "They want to have fun, they want to play. They like feeling large, like heros."
Some men, though, feel large enough. Nearly seven feet tall, Neil Bernstein ducks into the shop. The slender 36-year-old president of a medical staffing company, Bernstein was banished years ago to Big & amp; Tall. Feldenkreis recommended that he check out Pepi Bertini.
Gonzalez hops to it like a five-star waiter, delivering swatch books, hankies, ties and wine glasses of Evian to his new customers.
Bernstein vetoes maroon shirts and poses in the mirror angling his limbs through a Canali dinner jacket.
Gonzalez knows that left unattended, a deep-pocketed man could easily wind up looking like Elton John.
"They have to be led. If they say, 'I don't want blue,' OK, I leave out blue," he explained. "But I put the outfits together, I design the look. Otherwise, they'll look like" -- he mouths the word like profanity in front of a child -- "a fool."
Day's end
By the time the couples leave three hours later, Feldenkreis has bought a Fuertes painting for an amount greater than most college tuitions. And the Bernsteins are trying to think of extra wall space they might have for a Fuertes still life.
At almost 7 p.m., Gonzalez, who has been attending to customers without break for five hours, straightens his tie and begins to tuck away his swatch books.