Buying a pair of jeans today is an arduous task. Unless you’re a diehard consumer of one particular brand and style, you might end up a frustrated mess in some isolated dressing room, drowning in a pool of designer boot-cut, hip-slung 12-ouncers. David Lim, who owns the high-end denim label Kasil (pronounced “castle”), is figuring out how to stay afloat in this ocean of durable cotton. He shouldn’t have a problem, though. Lim was born into this.

Lim, 35, is the son of Richard Lim, owner of High Society Custom Tailoring in Los Angeles. For the past 30 years, the elder Lim has been a tailor to the stars, custom-making suits for the likes of Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Keanu Reeves, as well as designing dapper duds for movies like “Ocean’s Eleven.” Following in Dad’s footsteps, Lim’s line is also a favorite with celebrities. “Brad Pitt really loves our jeans, and so does Jennifer Aniston,” Lim says of his famous clientele. “So maybe our jeans can reunite them.”

The soft-spoken clothier comes off more artsy outsider than ruthless denim CEO. With a background in fine arts and painting, Lim never had aspirations of being involved in fashion. “It’s funny,” he says, sitting inside the huge loft of Kasil headquarters, just north of Los Angeles’ historic Chinatown district, “my original interest in denim wasn’t really the pants. I was more interested in using it as a canvas that I could paint on.”

Having dabbled in the movie industry as an assistant costume designer and illustrator after attending the Academy of Arts in San Francisco, Lim found himself bored and uninspired. “I realized I didn’t like that industry very much,” he says. “At that point I had nothing else to do.” After some experimental painting on scraps of denim he found in his dad’s store, Lim “slowly started to love the fabric and wanted to understand more about it.” He crafted his first dungarees shortly after that.

“I was sort of just playing around, trying to have fun and do whatever. I took some old jeans of mine and figured out how to make them. My dad has a pattern maker and sample sewers in the back and [I] just started from there.”

With his new interest, Lim acquired a job in brand development for a start-up denim line. At first focusing on the aesthetics, Lim eventually came up with the name and concept for the company. He ended up being offered a chance to invest money and become an owner. After witnessing Lim’s dedication and drive, his parents were willing to help him make the investment. Then tensions arose among the shareholders.

“They actually wanted to make [our product] lower-end and I was more geared towards the higher-end,” Lim says of the dispute. “[I was] lucky enough that they said, ‘Go ahead and take it.’ I took the name, the pattern and sample makers, and left.”