IN THE restless quest to provide the world with the next big fashion trend, many prominent clothing designers have taken to the streets in search of inspiration from the margins of urban life. Yet never before have they found a rags-to-riches fashion icon like the Crazy Robertson.

A 56-year-old homeless rollerskater from California, he has become a Hollywood sensation after a group of local entrepreneurs put his nickname on a line of clothing sold in the same Los Angeles boutique that carries jeans designed by Victoria Beckham.

Robertson’s real name is John Wesley Jermyn. For the past 20 years he has been living rough on Robertson Boulevard, a trendy shopping avenue second only to Rodeo Drive as a mecca for conspicuous Beverly Hills consumption.

Jermyn earned his nickname from his exotic rollerskating acrobatics and his tendency, when approached, to babble incomprehensibly. A statement he issued to coincide with his new clothing label starts with a conventional biography but dissolves into an impenetrable rant about “kinaesthetic acumen” and “exo-poetic awareness”.

Yet somehow this improbable character has become the focus of a marketing campaign to sell $98 (£48) hooded sweatshirts with a picture of him dancing on the front and the slogan “No money, no problems” on the back.

His clothes have reportedly been flying off the shelves at Kitson, a popular boutique chain that also sells baby shoes designed by Gwen Stefani, the pop singer. Yet Jermyn’s apparent good luck has also led to claims that he is being exploited by the owners of his label.

Although he signed a contract yielding rights to his name and image, his sister Beverly told the Wall Street Journal that he was suffering from a form of schizophrenia and had resisted attempts to provide him with medical help.

This is far from the first time homeless people have inspired fashion trends. Seven years ago John Galliano, then chief designer for Christian Dior, raised eyebrows when he showed a line of clothes made from silk printed with newspaper pages. Galliano said at the time the idea had occurred to him after he saw homeless people using papers as blankets as they slept under bridges over the Seine in Paris.

Several years before, Kosuke Tsumura, a young Japanese designer, produced a transparent nylon coat with 40 zippered pockets that could be stuffed with newspapers as extra padding. The coat was part of a line Tsumura called “final home” – emergency clothes should their owner fall on hard times.

Yet Jermyn may be the first authentically homeless individual to become a fashion icon. Formerly a star athlete who came from a prosperous middle-class home, he appears to have run into trouble in the late 1970s after a short-lived career as a professional baseball player.

His biography says he lost his driver’s licence in 1989 and was evicted from his flat. From 1990, he writes, he “pursued street life” as a dancer, percussionist, martial arts choreographer and rollerskater.

Over the years, he became something of a tourist attraction and there was much gossip to the effect he was a secret millionaire living out a private fantasy.

The reality, according to his sister, was not so glamorous. In the late 1980s she went to court to try to force her brother to have medical treatment, but he was able to convince psychologists he was still in control of his life. He has refused all subsequent offers of therapy and shelter, although his sister provides him with a mobile phone and collects his welfare payments for him.

Teddy Hirsh, one of the entrepreneurs who founded the Robertson label, rejected claims they were taking advantage of a mentally ailing man. Hirsh and his colleagues spent several months talking to Jermyn about the project and eventually persuaded him to sign a contract that gives him 5% of net profit from clothing sales.

The main problem, Hirsh added, is that Jermyn does not believe in money, preferring to be paid with food, alcohol and paper for his art projects. “He tries not to involve money in his daily life,” Hirsh said.

Jermyn is also on his way to becoming an internet star. He has his own website – TheCrazy-Robertson.com – and Hirsh has enrolled him at MySpace, the social networking site. In the surest sign he has become a Hollywood star, someone has invited him to brunch at Michel Richard, a celebrity patisserie on Robertson Boulevard.

Getting him to talk about his success is proving a problem, however. A CBS television reporter noted that “his soft speech is frequently unintelligible” and that “he appears to have some psychological problems”. A Wall Street Journal reporter found that he “mixes short, lucid sentences with longer, less coherent remarks”.

Jermyn’s statement – posted in full on his website – offers few clues to his true feelings about his new fashion status, but he does commit himself to “ensure and enhance an aura/ level of consummate entrepre-neurial professionalism”.

The Crazy Robertson website

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