LOS ANGELES — Hate couture is all the rage.

The girl who "took an axe and gave her mother forty wacks" in the popular jump-rope diddy now has her own hip line of specially mutilated clothing: Lizzy Borden Jeanwear.

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"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one."
             — Amer. folk song (Anon.)

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"We don't just distress the jeans," says chief clothing designer Fabian Knight, "we chop and shred the hell out of them 'til they practically beg and scream for mercy!  Our customers expect the jeans to barely stay on their bodies and to be barely recognizeable as jeans.  They end up more like a lot of string cheese, with red food coloring added." 

Proving that you don't have to even need a pulse to create your own brand of terribly distressing jeanwear these days, Lizzy Borden takes the market for jeans to a whole new level — a new low.   


"Lizzy Borden Jeanwear targets angsty teenagers who have rage at authority figures such as parents, teachers and police," says Ashlee Choi, editor  in chief of In 'dis Dress magazine. "It's a cathartic release of displaced fury that can be harmlessly applied to the very clothes that shield these teens.  They can literally wear their anger on their sleeves — it's very empowering." 

But parents are uneasy about the celebration of a girl who, "when she was done [with mom] gave her father forty-one [whacks with a hatchet]."

"It's not that I don't trust my daughter — though I'm... not exactly sleeping soundly these days," says one mother whose daughter requested anonymity. "When you imagine having a child of your own, you simply can't fathom them running around in jeans that honor a parent-murderer."

Lizzie Bordon Jeanwear has not only branded the name, but their marketing department has created eye-catching shopping mall kiosks where, in the spirit of Benihana restaurants, you can get your jeans "chopped up on the spot," and where you get to "pour your own acid onto it and splatter it with fake blood."  All for an extra cost, of course.

"It's so cooool!" says 14-year-old Raychill Hammond.  "Lizzy Borden is my new hero.   She had her own out-of-the-box way of thinking.  Some kids use paint to express themselves; she used blood as a medium.  What's the big diff'?!"