Frank & Eileen give men’s shirts a woman’s touch

With three successful fashion businesses to her credit, one might expect Audrey McLoghlin, founder of the classic, made-in-America brand Frank & Eileen, to possess a degree in fashion design, merchandising or marketing.

Far from it. While growing up, McLoghlin’s conservative Irish parents gave her three choices for her career: doctor, lawyer or engineer. She chose engineering, which led her to Georgia Tech, where beginning her junior year, she began having second thoughts about her chosen field.

“I love the discipline of engineering. I love that it teaches you how to think, but after a while I didn’t feel that it was what I wanted to do for a living. I started to panic and wonder who I wanted to be.”

She now credits her engineering background with giving her the discipline to problem-solve, which has allowed her to thrive in an industry that’s difficult to navigate.

McLoghlin will be at Neiman Marcus to launch her latest Frank & Eileen collection from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday.

Most striking about the collection is that, at first glance, her line of casual, button-down menswear shirts for women ($198 to $248) looks as if it would be more at home in an L.L.Bean or REI catalog than a luxury store.

But that is part of its charm and exclusivity. While most brands home in on girly styles, womanly polish or streetwise urban looks, McLoghlin embraces tomboy chic, if that tomboy also has an affinity for fine Italian voiles, cotton poplins, chambrays and linens.

During a phone interview from Los Angeles, where the 8-year-old company is based, McLoghlin said Frank & Eileen — named after her grandparents — started by accident. She was in a showroom shopping for cashmere, and the vendor “left me alone in a room too long,” she said. “I started snooping around and found a book of Italian fabric.”

Next thing you know, she was meeting with representatives of the Italian fabric mill.

“I always loved shirting and thought of making it fitted and sexy.” She decided the key to getting Americans to warm up to Italian shirting was to give it a cool L.A. vibe by roughing it up a bit with various washes to give each a unique finish and lived-in look.

After six months she was in business. Only after her first orders were shipped out to Ron Herman, Fred Segal and Barney’s boutiques did she start to wonder, “What if nobody wants it?”

But her instincts had served her well. McLoghlin had worked for a startup company in Boston until the dot-com boom went bust in 2000. She had spent her teen years working in retail and enjoyed it, so with fashion in mind, she moved to California. Working for an accessories and jewelry designer, she received a crash course in business management, production, sales and human resources. After a year, with “an entrepreneurial burn in my belly,” McLoghlin said, she struck out on her own.

She describes her first boutique in Manhattan Beach, Una, as a miniature Barney’s. In her product mix were staple tank tops and T-shirts that customers loved, but McLoghlin said her clients were disappointed when the end of season came and manufacturers discontinued their favorite styles.

So she decided to produce staple pieces herself. But finding factories that would accept small minimum orders was difficult. She placed a huge order anyway and, with the extra stock, entered the wholesale business, selling her clothes to other boutiques.

These days she focuses her energy on Frank & Eileen. In spite of its rumpled, rustic vibe, McLoghlin said people with a discerning eye for fine fabric “have an immediate attraction to the shirts.”

“They’re so easy to wear and can be styled in so many ways. You can throw them in a washing machine. There’s no dry cleaning, no need to iron. There’s nothing complicated.”