NEW YORK – On Spring Street, in the artsy Soho neighborhood of Manhattan , customers don't buy Denis Pavlov's progressive shirts because of his fashion sense.

The 21-year-old from St. Petersburg , Russia , wears polyester pinstriped pants, a knit vest over a faded shirt and walks in worn-out Converse high-tops.

But his shirts fly off the tables he has on the street.

In just 9 months, he has gone from walking around with five shirts to three locations in the city and daily sales as high as $1,300.

Back home, he played in a punk band and scrawled graffiti around town. When he was 17, his father, who moved to the United States 20 years ago, urged him to study programming at St. Petersburg State University in Russia . But markers, stencils and a guitar drove his favorite pastimes.

Pavlov came to New York three years ago to live with his father and pursue the American Dream.

“Working as a waiter wasn't enough,” Pavlov says. “At first I didn't think I could sell them on the street, but I felt the money coming and I just did it.”

He crafts the shirts in his apartment in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn .

“I was always artsy, but once I started doing this, I discovered I could do real art,” Pavlov says.

He starts by drawing an image or taking a photograph. Once the design is silk-screened onto the garment, Pavlov hand-paints other elements to complement the design.

“All my friends started asking me to make them shirts, so I started to sell to them,” Pavlov says.

With a $3,000 investment, Pavlov bought shirts and ink, and hired two assistants to help print more than 300 shirts. The investor suggested Pavlov move to his current location instead of walking around Bushwick.

Pavlov now has three locations, one in the East Village and two in SoHo.

Pavlov says the most challenging part of his venture is managing the inventory between three locations. He and his crew usually work from noon until 7 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends.

They keep costs down by making only enough shirts to meet demand. Pavlov analyzes sales to determine which designs are selling best and keeps a small inventory at a storage facility on Spring Street.

Managing a business is always risky. Running a business outdoors complicates things.

Pavlov constantly fights the wind. He tends the shirts often, refolding and tucking them in place.

Shirts are held down by bungee cords while a table cloth flutters in the wind. Lids occasionally fly off the tops of plastic containers holding extra shirts. Customers scramble to help Pavlov pick up shirts blown into the sidewalk.

But sometimes even the customers are a threat.

Two months ago, Pavlov says, someone tried to steal an upside-down man shirt from his table. A man grabbed the shirt and turned to leave but was trapped by a passing crowd of people.

Pavlov locked his hands around the shirt while the man kicked him in the shin and thigh. When Pavlov freed the shirt, the man threatened him with a beer bottle.

“That one was really creepy, but it's OK,” he says. “I'm used to it.”

The nature of his audience allows Pavlov to experiment with wild designs. His customers are usually males between 17 and 25, but a lot of older people buy them as gifts.

Gwen Stefani once bought a shirt, he says – the hammer and sickle, his first design.

His best seller is the upside-down man, a self-portrait he took with a timed camera. The inverted image looks like a break dancer defying gravity.

Space Station Mir is also popular. A line drawing of the modular spaceship is overlapped two or three times in different colors. Splatters of ink mimic a star field.

“It always changes, which one is popular. About six months ago it was the rocket,” he says, pointing to an illustration of the space shuttle on roaring booster rockets.

Pavlov's latest designs are symbols of New York . A water tower silhouette and a construction crane with scaffolding appeal to tourists and natives alike, he says.

His next series of designs will feature a man holding a gun. Pavlov also plans to draw a Superman design with repeating layers to suggest movement.

Pavlov wants to create a Web site to increase sales. “I wish I already had the Web site, but I'm trying to talk to different people to find out the best way,” he says.

A Web site would help him reach a larger market and take requests for custom shirts. But while he hopes to continue increasing sales, what he really wants to do is pursue an education, he says.

Fashion design and marketing are the next challenge Pavlov wants to take on. He plans to enter Hunter College in the fall.

His father still does not agree with his plans to pursue fashion design. But he is hopeful about his son's interest in marketing.

Pavlov, though, trusts his creative talent.

“I'm good at promotions for my business,” he says, “but my heart is in design.”