Sports clothes: designer Cary Mitchell shuns the limelight, working behind the scenes to train athletes to dress for success.

• Author: Cary, Michael

The cellular phone in Cary Mitchell's downtown Charlotte condominium rings for, oh, the 10th or 11th time this half-hour. Mitchell, planted on a den sofa, leans forward to pick it up. He studies the digital display to find out who's on the other end. Some calls he takes, some he doesn't. This one he takes.

"What's up, Shareef?" he says, his voice slipping into a lower, more casual mode. "Yeah, yeah. Right. Did you get that box? Good. All right. Bye."

Mitchell clicks off the phone and lays it on a table. He apologizes for the delay, but the call was from a client who had recently ordered suits from Charlotte-based Cary Mitchell Designs, the clothing company he runs out of a third-story office in his Fourth Ward condo. "He got the suits two weeks ago," Mitchell explains, "but I forgot he asked me to match up some ties to go with them. He was just checking on the status."

"He" in this case is basketball star Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a forward with the Vancouver Grizzlies. Abdur-Rahim is one of more than 60 NBA players who hire Mitchell to design custom-tailored suits, shirts and sport coats. His client list reads like an All-Star roster: Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Gary Payton, Larry Johnson. He also designs clothes for baseball's Ken Griffey Jr. and golf's Tiger Woods. Designer to the young, rich and famous, Mitchell, 39, operates in relative anonymity. His is not a big name in Charlotte's business community. Not even a medium name.

Mitchell prefers it that way - for now. Since founding the business nine years ago, he has built it through word-of-mouth, without publicity or advertising. It's almost an Amway philosophy: You tell a millionaire, then he tells a millionaire, then he tells another millionaire . . .

That low-key approach has served him well. He earns a good living, posting annual revenue well into six figures. His suits are expensive enough - $850 to $1,600 - that he can keep the client list small and still generate plenty of cash. Mitchell could walk down any street without being noticed, yet many of his clients couldn't walk five steps without being hounded by groupies and autograph-seekers.

"I guess you could say I have an elite clientele, but I don't look at it that way really," says Mitchell, a Richmond, Va., native and 1983 graduate of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. "To me they're just customers. People. They may be a little better known than the average guy. But they are just guys - no...