“Stylists, most of us like nice clothes and stuff, and we were covering them up with these horrible aprons,” says Shelly Hatting, owner of Bleach salon in St. Paul. Anything from beauty supply stores comes printed with hair product brand names, or it’s plain but too cheaply made to last. Her idea: durable, designer salon wear.

She started Battledress salon apparel a year and a half ago with two friends. Of the name, and the military-style Battledress dogtag attached to each apron, Hatting says it’s an inside joke for her fellow salon workers: “Sometimes as a stylist, we don’t love all of our clients.”