SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. _ As often happens in the annals of California innovation, the story of how one of the state's last grizzly bears came to be a global fashion icon begins in an 8-by-8 foot garage.
In the early 1980s, three young surfers _ Kevin Greenwood, Mark Travis and Andrew Batty _ set up shop in the Central Coast beach town of Cayucos, seeking to join forces in the T-shirt trade. They named their enterprise Dolphin Shirt. Co., decorating their apparel with images of orcas, sea lions and, yes, dolphins.
It was tough going at first: To purchase supplies, the partners often pooled their pocket change. In time, though, Dolphin Shirt expanded, first into a barn, and then to a small shop here near the railroad station.
Enter the bear.
"I noticed that animals were selling," recalled Don Pimentel, a self-employed architect dabbling in T-shirt design. "I said, 'Wow, I can do that.'"
In 1985 Pimentel painted a bear, working off an outline of the grizzly that marches across the California flag. He presented it to Dolphin and then headed to Hawaii.
While Pimentel was away, the partners expanded on his design. His rendition of the bear, with his signature found just below its rear, right paw, remained. But now a red star hovered over the bear's snout and a bar ran across the bottom, underscoring the legend "California Republic."
In short, the shirt makers had more or less replicated the California state flag, whose design is rooted in the banner of the so-called Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. They sold eight dozen shirts right off the bat.
"It just started going," Greenwood said, "and going and going. And it's still going."
Thirty years later, the no longer quite-so-young surfers _ Greenwood gives his age as 59 and a half and three quarters _ find themselves riding a fresh wave of global enthusiasm for all things California. The trend goes far beyond bear-flag themed T-shirts and related knick-knacks and spin-offs.
"California as a brand is incredibly valuable overseas," said economist Kevin Klowden, who directs the Milken Institute's California Center in Santa Monica. "It probably does better outside the state than inside."
He sees it in the explosion of Chinese direct investment in California, which, according to a California Center study released earlier this year, grew from $100 million in 2005 to $9 billion in 2015.
He sees it in all manner of foreign investors seeking to secure a piece of California real estate, or agriculture, or Silicon Valley innovation.
While beaches, movie stars and beautiful mountains don't hurt, this does not seem to be about the realities of California _ see gridlock, gang crime, sprawl, gaping income disparities, soaring rent, overtaxed water supplies _ but rather about the idea of California.
Economic and design experts note that the phrase "designed in California" now trumps the notion of made in California. They point to the message Apple inserts into boxes that carry its phones to consumers worldwide: "Designed by Apple in California."
Simon Sadler, a UC Davis professor of architecture and urban history, described the phenomenon a few years back in Bolt, the UC Press e-magazine: "Even when California design offers little more than an ersatz commonwealth through consumption, it arrives in the market accompanied by the hope of something more than another consumer fetish."
"California design," he continued, "promises to do something, to enable its subjects to attain a better and more replete future. Over-wrought though that might seem, the beautiful (Apple) boxes shipping from California contain this covenant, illusory or real."
As do products brandishing variations on the California bear flag motif.
