How Alyssa Milano Created a Fan-Gear Fashion Empire for Women

Alyssa Milano isn’t crazy about pink. “I was in Dodger Stadium, and I was freezing—it was the beginning of the season, before the poop smell sets in,” says the star of TV’s Who’s the Boss? and Charmed, recalling a baseball game she attended eight years ago. “I went into the store to get something warm to wear. And I was offended.” The only color available in women’s clothing was pink. “Their answer for female sports apparel back then was ‘pink it and shrink it.’ It was either that or buy something from the kids’ section. Which I did. I got a kid’s hoodie.” In Dodger blue.

Milano, 40, figured she could do better than the mini Pepto-Bismol tees. So in 2007 she paid a fashion illustrator to draw some less boxy, team-color-appropriate clothing. Her agent happened to be friends with someone at Major League Baseball’s marketing division and got her a meeting with some execs. They liked her idea enough to set her up with former New York Giant Carl Banks, who runs the sports clothing collection for G-III Apparel Group, the $1.2 billion company that has licensing deals with Levi’s, Guess? Calvin Klein and the major sports leagues. G-III Apparel agreed to manufacture and distribute her nascent line, Touch by Alyssa Milano, which had this motto: “Where the game meets the after party.”
“My idea was to make Touch fashionable enough for women to wear outside the arena,” Milano says. The line, which was launched in 2008, now includes $85 quilted jackets in team colors, $45 jeans with logos on the back pockets, and $30 pendant necklaces with the logo in a crystal-lined silver heart. Milano chose the designs and modeled every piece on her website.

Still, her pitch meetings were a bust. She had trouble convincing team buyers that she even knew enough about sports to understand what she was selling. “It was a lot of work to validate my passion and knowledge. It’s probably what every woman goes through when she’s a sports fan. Except I was trying to validate it to Jim Rome,” she says of being interviewed by the loudmouthed sports talk show host. Milano grew up in Brooklyn, where she bonded with her dad and brother over New York Giants and L.A. Dodgers games. (Her dad stayed loyal even when the Dodgers did not.) She’s dated several professional athletes, such as hockey player Wayne McBean and pitchers Carl Pavano, Barry Zito, and Brad Penny. She’s also had L.A. Kings season tickets since she was 15 and Dodgers season tickets for the past 10 years. Milano blogs for MLB.com; hosts segments on the TBS network called Hot Corner; and wrote a book in 2009 called Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic. Her Australian shepherd is named Dodger Dog.