Fantastic Jurney: NYC Clothing Designer Making Inroads in Golf & Fashion Industry

Yes, that headline is spelled correctly - Fantastic Jurney - because New Yorker James Jurney, his wife Gwendolyn and their company have endured every small business nightmare imaginable to build Seize Sur Vingt, a burgeoning designer clothing company in the beating heart of New York's fiercely competitive fashion industry. Besides a wide array of impeccable suits and jackets - everything from seersucker to madras to the finest imported silks - they have carved out a niche with a series of golf shirts, every bit as classy and durable as the Burberry worn by such stars as Adam Scott and Justin Rose.

"My wife and I started the company in 1998," Jurney begins with a faraway look of remembrance of the old days in his eye. "We were originally going to import French shirts, but we decided we didn't like the styles of those clothes and wanted to try it our way." After getting engaged to his wife while on a trip through Europe looking at clothing and styles, the Jurneys returned home to found their own company.

"Truth be told, many French shirts are made in the U.S. Thinking that we could make a high-quality product at a fair price that could compete, we made our own brand, Seize Sur Vingt, which we chose because it sounded French," he explains. Seize sur Vingt is French for "16 and 20."

"We designed our shirts and we found a factory in Pennsylvania that also made shirts for many great European and American labels."

The shirts are the paragon of craftsmanship and quality. Take for example the golf shirts and collared polo-style shirts sold under the sub-brand "UBNY - United Boroughs of New York."

"The fabrics are from Italy," Jurney said. "The Egyptian cotton is two-ply and double-twisted so it's durable, but feels like silk against your skin."

"Additionally," he added, "you get great bang for your buck. Besides a smooth and durable cotton, you get a more silky type of shirt. Long staple cotton is the closest we can get to true silk. The two-ply makes it more durable, but they won't unravel or 'pill up.' "

He's right. Even under the toughest playing conditions - I played 36 holes in 100-degree heat in them, they were a great balance of durability, feel and, best of all, style. The shirts also have the added bonus of wicking away sweat. I can personally attest to how cool and durable they were in the blast furnace heat of Tulsa earlier in August while covering the PGA Championship for Cybergolf. Each of the five shirts in the initial UBNY line is not only a different color, but comes with a hand-sewn "country patch" - an emblem commemorating Italy, Spain, Wales, New Zealand or Denmark. For the future of the line, Jurney will unveil five more shirts - one for each of New York's five boroughs.

"We have a new 'New York Citizen' shirt people really liked," he begins energetically. "So it gave me an idea for a different approach. This new group are a crew collar, soft cotton, almost a tissue feel with muted tunes - navy, gray, green, red and black, but sort of in earthier tones, but they are New York-centric. We will issue a different shirt for each borough and each one will have a different 'animal mascot,' " he says with a smile. "For example, with Manhattan we chose the red tail hawk. You know how the ones in Central Park are sort of the city's unofficial mascot? There is a bond between the Manhattanites and the hawks, so we chose that for that shirt," he finishes proudly.

Each of the other borough "mascots" is equally interesting, but you'll have to wait for the rollout of the line to see the rest for yourself. "Without getting too specific, we wanted something to celebrate Staten Island's rich history of fishing and whaling and we wanted a mascot for Queens to be especially multi-cultural. You get the idea," he says with a grin.

Yet the company is more than just great shirts. "After starting with shirts, we then expanded into suits and they took off. They became one of the strengths of the SSV brand. We also do cashmere sweaters and have a cool, casual playful brand for younger crowds called Troglodyte Homonculus."

Indeed, there is something for everyone at SSV - high-quality classic designs for the powerful businessman, sporty shirts for golfers, T-shirts for the T-shirts and jeans look, even wedding suits. Even the seersucker or madras shorts go great with any of the shirts. "Some of our best are a plaid called 'Liquor is Quicker' after the Ogden Nash poem - it has nothing to do with liquor - and also our linen suit line. Also, linen is coming back in a big way and when done right, it's an elegant suit or shirt."

The company is also producing summer daytime cocktail party clothes, outfits you can wear in the Hamptons or Manhattan or at the picnic in your hometown, Seattle or Syracuse, Boston or Baja. Wear it in the right places and it's worth its weight in gold; elegant and sharp.

"Quality is our most important goal," Jurney said. "We spend a lot of money on tailoring to make sure the fit is good. It's so critical to a good product, but it's so important to our end product being as good as possible. Developing the brands took a while, but it's moved well. We want to offer a solid, good product at a fair price, luxury products at a price that isn't a nosebleed. At too high a price point, you're losing a lot of customers." Champagne quality at mixed-drink prices, so to speak. At the same time, conservative or more daring, there is something for everyone.

Seize Sur Vingt is located at 243 Elizabeth Street, NY, NY, phone 212.343.0476, or on the web at http://www.16sur20.com. Their other brick-and-mortar store, called Groupe, is located mere steps away at 267 Elizabeth Street. With retailers in Toronto, Chicago, Boston, L.A. and Miami Beach, to name just a few, it's perhaps your last chance to catch the wave before the brand becomes a household name.

Since launching his first golf writing website in 2004, http://www.jayflemma.thegolfspace.com, Jay Flemma's comparative analysis of golf designs and knowledge of golf course architecture and golf travel have garnered wide industry respect. In researching his book on America's great public golf courses (and whether they're worth the money), Jay, an associate editor of Cybergolf, has played over 220 nationally ranked public golf courses in 37 different states. Jay has played about 1,649,000 yards of golf - or roughly 938 miles. His pieces on travel and architecture appear in Golf Observer (www.golfobserver.com), Cybergolf and other print magazines. When not researching golf courses for design, value and excitement, Jay is an entertainment, copyright, Internet and trademark lawyer and an Entertainment and Internet Law professor in Manhattan. His clients have been nominated for Grammy and Emmy awards, won a Sundance Film Festival Best Director award, performed on stage and screen, and designed pop art for museums and collectors. Jay lives in Forest Hills, N.Y., and is fiercely loyal to his alma maters, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and Trinity College in Connecticut.