No bones about it, skull's still in session for fashionistas: formerly eerie icon becomes a mainstream staple.

SOME Speedo swimsuits have an unexpected decoration: skulls.

For that matter, Speedo puts skulls on some of its shorts, flip flops and goggles.

"We're leaving no skull unturned," said Sheree Waterson, president of Los Angeles-based Speedo North America. "It's reached the mainstream and now it's like the new black."

Once largely limited to clothes worn by angry Goth or heavy metal teens, the skull motif is now showing up on business suits, wallets, pearl necklaces and even baby blankets.

"It was considered very dark and dangerous," said Roseanne Morrison, fashion director at the Doneger Group, "and now it's not." She recently saw skulls at Paris fashion shows, and in the city's hot boutiques. "It's lost its edge, which is maybe why it has such mass appeal."

Eddie Bledsoe, a professor of fashion history, was ordering scrambled eggs and bacon at a Calabasas coffee shop one weekend last month when he noticed that his waitress was wearing a pink headband with a rhinestone skull topped off with a crown.

"I asked her where she got it," said Bledsoe, "and she said she didn't know, that it was her daughter's."

It's as if the skull fashion craze, which hit a peak two years ago, is refusing to accept what it symbolizes--death. Instead of fading away as most fads, skulls have been picked up by even more mainline companies in Los Angeles.

In fact, skulls have become standard for high-end denim companies in Los Angeles. Culver City-based Rock & Republic has used skulls in many of its designs. J & Co. has been using rhinestone skulls on the back pockets of designer Julien Jarmoune's best-selling jeans for about a year.

Jewelry designer Jessica Elliot, whose work is sold at boutiques nationwide, began using skulls eight months ago, in response to customer requests.

"They got a great response because they were different," she said, adding that she began tweaking the motif for modern fashions. "They're cute and edgy, but not scary looking. Mine are kind of happy-looking skulls."

Fred Naggar, who founded L.A.-based fashion line Glamour Campaign in late 2006, is now known for his $600 Swarovski crystal skull blazers sold at Kitson and other hot boutiques.

"The skull is like the new happy face," he said.

Just three months after launching his line, the blazers have been selling out. He'd planned to launch his line in about 20 stores, but 124 of the 125 he approached all placed orders.

Pirated popularity

L.A. designer Deborah Lindquist started using skulls about two years ago, after the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. She believes the film's popularity has been a factor in the current fascination with skulls.

"Movies really affect what people wear," she said. "'Frida' led to Spanish influence in fashion and so I think Johnny Depp has something to do with it."

Among Lindquist's most popular designs are cashmere sweaters with an appliqued skull and pearls on the back. The skulls have been good to Lindquist. Her designs have been featured in French and American versions of Elle magazine, In Touch Weekly and Entertainment Tonight. And the orders keep flooding in.

"I make crosses, fleur-de-lis and peace signs, but skulls are on every order," said Lindquist, "no matter where it's from. The Midwest and even the South are picking up on it. They weren't so sure at first in the Bible belt, but now they love it."

For the fashion business, the skull craze points out two major trends, said Richard Giss, a retail consultant at Deloitte & Touche LLP: the power of the consumer, and the speed at which fashions are arriving to market.

"The shorter turnaround times are absolutely making big manufacturers responsive to the consumers," he said. "None of the retailers want to take a big risk on something fashion forward, but they want to be able to jump on a bandwagon when it appears."

This way, companies can hedge their bets a little, waiting to see what sells in their stores and the trends getting picked up in fashion magazines. When there are indicators that a trend or design isn't going away in terms of consumer demand, manufacturers can run off a few million more items.

Skulls have been significant as an icon in many cultures and for many centuries. The ancient Aztecs used skull images extensively in their architecture, which dates back to 900 A.D., and the image is still prominent in Mexican folk art and culture today, particularly in the Meso-American holiday el Dia de la Meurte, or Day of the Dead.

Some historians say King Roger II of Sicily was the first European to turn the skull and crossbones into a flag prior to a conflict with the Pope in 1127. Another theory suggests that it appeared shortly after the Vatican began sending ships to North America in search of gold. Their ships flew flags with cross keys, symbolizing the Pope. It is thought that pirates adopted the cross bones with a super-imposed skull as an insult to the Vatican and Rome.

The skull was used as a symbol for poison or toxicity starting in the 19th century. However, the skull was replaced by the "Mr. Yuk" symbol in the United States in the early 1970s because of fears that the prevalence of pirate or skull-themed toys made it more likely that children would play with bottles carrying similar imagery.

The Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, founded in San Bernardino in 1948, adopted skulls for their logo. Skulls also became symbolic of the music world's punk, Goth and heavy metal crazes in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. One of the more familiar and best-selling sports images, belonging to the National Football League's Raiders, is a modified skull motif.

The imagery's dark roots can still cause problems for retailers and marketers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. came under fire earlier this year when critics found skull T-shirts sold in their stores too similar to the so-called "Nazi death head."

"It's going through the whole cycle," said Bledsoe, who teaches history at the Otis College of Art and Design. "It was a dangerous symbol of hate and then a symbol of reckless machismo, then it's used in punk and later picked up by the New Romantics."

And ahead?

There are numerous theories about what brought skulls back from the dead, but many fashion industry observers agree that the recurring installments of the Walt Disney Co.'s popular "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise as providing a boost.

Giss said the skull trend might be an extension of the growing popularity of tattoos and a way to make a subtle statement.

"The interest lies in the dissatisfaction with modern culture and the advent of terrorism," said Morrison, citing the skull's frequent appearances as an emblem of a movement.

No one is sure how long skulls will endure, but it's getting hard to characterize them as a passing trend.

"It's going to keep growing," Naggar said. "It's not going away, and the symbol is changing. People now have more of an artistic take on it."

While there are a lot of manufacturers ramping up to meet the demand, Giss said, he also expects skulls to die.

"My expectation is that is has some continuing legs but when it dries up it will dry up quickly," he said. "This is not a long-term fashion trend."

Sandy Richman, principal of retail consultants Directives West, recently returned from a trip to Tokyo, where skulls on handbags were hot. A veteran of decades on the fashion scene, she's expecting skulls to fade.

"It's still there, but it's not growing," said a skeptical Richman, who admits she has a skull necklace that draws attention.

"Every time I wear it, people say, 'That is so great. Where did you get it?'"

By EMILY BRYSON YORK

Staff Reporter