Clothing With a Message College friends launch a design business that makes fashion inspirational.

Countless designers worldwide sell clothing for men, women andchildren, filling the media and pop culture worlds with theirtrademarks and frills. For any fashion design company, particularlya fledging one, standing out from the crowd requires a gimmick, andit better be a good one.

How about stripping the conceit, decadence and self-promotionout of fashion? How about designing clothes that make a statement,that stand for a cause? That's the mission of Charizmatik, a6-year-old Los Angeles clothing company that features inspirationalmessages on the drop tags attached to its line of dress shirts,T-shirts, jackets, blazers and sweatshirts. Inspired by movies,Eastern philosophy and more, the uplifting messages are also hiddeninside each article of clothing, often surprising wearers when theyfirst do the laundry.

Charizmatik is the creation of Zen Nishimura, 27, and FredFriedler, 32, former business students at Loyola MarymountUniversity (LMU), also in Los Angeles. Both wanted to startclothing lines and were introduced to each other by a professor.They started talking, and within months the like-minded designersproduced their first shirts in Nishimura's apartment.