Business & Tech

10-Year-Old's 'Aha!' Moment Spurs Family Business with Serious – and Fashionable – Legs

Girls have been mismatching their socks and mittens to make a fashion statement for years. Why not the legs on their leggings? The rest is history.

A revolutionary brand of “Made in Michigan” leggings allows young fashionistas to mix it up in a way they never have before.

The girls’ leggings are the brainchild of 10-year-old Josie Ervin of Beverly Hills and her mother, Kristin of Beverly Hills. Josie asked a big “what if?” question while visiting her grandfather, Tom Ervin, at his Bloomfield Township home one afternoon.

What if the legs on leggings were interchangeable? And what if they developed a legging line and cleverly called it “Oppos” – for opposites?

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The rest is legging history, and the family is now in business. Oppos’ slogan is: “Do both legs have to look alike? Dress yourself one leg at a time!”

The leggings feature a patented zipper technology allowing the legs to be mixed and matched for new outfit combinations every day. There are 48 possible legging combos.

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But what are leggings without shirts and headbands that complement them? They’re all available for purchase at oppos.com or at Stars and Stripes Activity Center in Clarkston.

They come in an array of colors and prints, from fuchsia to yellow and galaxy to zebra

Oppos is truly a homegrown, “Made in Michigan” business that touches several metro Detroit areas – Bloomfield Township, where Tom Ervin lives; Beverly Hills, where Kristin, Bill and Josie Ervin live; Lake Orion, where designer Shelly Chilton, formerly of Royal Oak, lives; Birmingham, where Josie is a fifth-grader at Covington School; and Roseville, where most of the inventory is manufactured at a family-owned facility.


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