Business Review: C28 Christian Clothing Store in Fairfield, California

In the past couple of decades modern Christianity has made several futile attempts in reaching out to the youth culture by trying to enmesh with trendy clothing. If "No Fear" was in style, there was a "Fear God" shirt right behind it in similar lettering. If Hypercolor was the trend, shirts that said "Hyper for Jesus" were created, and so forth and so on. It all seemed so hopeless. And now there is Not of This World, the main clothing line sold by the C28 Christian clothing store. The oC28 I visited was at the Solano Mall in Fairfield, California. Currently there are about a dozen more scattered around malls in California and also one in Florida. And if everything stays on the trend I am seeing in Northern California, there will be many more in the near future.

C28 stands for the Bible verse Colossians 2:8. that text reads in the New American Standard Version "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." In other words, follow Christ and his principles, not the ones in this world because Christ is "not of this world". How creative!

I was baffled by the line of Christian clothing because the Not Of This World clothes I had seen in public were very stylish and required a little bit of inquiry before you discovered that within the clothing pattern were words of scripture.

C28 actually sells more than just clothes. There is a huge display of CDs, racks of jewelry and extremely popular "NOTW" car decals, and a television blasting videos of modern Christian rock bands such as MXPX, Audio Adrenaline, As I Lay Dying, and the David Crowder Band. This store clearly was going for EVERY angle in promoting a Christian lifestyle that could easily blend into modern society without falling into the cheesy, obviously trying too hard marketing that went on in the 80s and 90s. Don't you remember those horrible "No Fear" knock-off shirts that read "Fear God"?

There are other brands of Christian clothing besides Not Of This World in the C28 store. The Ezekiel brand features the word "Ezekiel" as its main design logo a la Ecko Unlimited and Tommy Hilfiger. There were some nifty designs, but most were not of my taste. Truth Soul Armor seemed to have designs that leaned towards the skater-punk crowd. There were also dozens of shoes with some actually hip designs of scriptures and proverbs.

I did purchase one Not Of This World shirt from C28 that had a very eye-catching design. On the front were the words "Tolerance Kills". Below it in Old English-inspired font were other phrases like "apathy kills" and "ritual kills". Yet on the back, there were phrases like "grace saves" and "love saves" with a few Bible verses neatly lining the left side up to the sleeve. I could see where a young Christian could use this shirt as a talking point to others because even if you couldn't read everything, the design was beautiful!

There were several other shirts in C28 that had wonderful designs that featured the Lion of Judah and other figures. My other favorite purchase was a sticker for my car. It had a skeleton on his knees praying upward with the words saying "Don't Wait Before Its Too Late!"

Although the store was impressive with its wide array of modern Christian apparel and accessories, I was most impressed by the staff and their dedication to what the store is all about: outreach. The young clerk, Ryan, rang up my purchase and asked me if I wanted him to pray for me about anything. I told him my family was going through a transition and we needed to make sure that God would grace us with a sign to let us know we were going to be o.k. Ryan happily noted that and then asked "well, would you like to pray now?" He came from behind the counter, held my hand and my wife's hand, and gave us a beautiful prayer asking God to grant our wishes. A complete stranger to him and he had no problems to show the strength of his faith to us.

C28 is definitely Not Of This World.