That L.A. Look
I have always tended toward the brash, the provocative, even the eccentric: Barbara Stanwyck’s slightly trashy “honey of an anklet” in “Double Indemnity,” the spandexed derriere of Sarah Jessica Parker in “L.A. Story,” Tony Roberts’ goggled space-age suit in “Annie Hall.”
According to the current “Baywatch”-informed conventional wisdom, we Angelenos spend large portions of our days lounging in thong bikinis, Rollerblades, designer sunglasses and cell phones. OK, they’ve got us on designer sunglasses and cell phones, but most of the mass-marketed images of Los Angeles style seem based on one too many viewings of “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” Sure, there are women here who would wear a white turban and tiger-skin Lycra pants with a Mary Martin midriff and gold lame stiletto straps, but only around the house, darling.
We’ll admit that this year’s attempts by designers to capture the L.A. image are a triumph (almost) of accuracy. The ethnic-print silk skirts that swirled above bare legs and flip-flops and the beaded capri pants topped with rocker-glam T-shirts that recently sauntered down New York and European runways have evoked Los Angeles as never before. Yet the reality remains that there is no one L.A. style. Not even close. The city’s diversity, geography, history and sheer stubbornness won’t allow it. What plays well in Encino screams for mercy on Melrose; what satisfies in Santa Monica gets laughed out of town in Lincoln Heights. We are the city that dragged the artist Erte onto the studio lot in 1926 to design costumes for the film version of “La Boheme,” and then let Lillian Gish argue with him. Argue with him, and win the argument. Because she wanted to wear silk, dammit.
Unlike New York, the city of perpetual mourning, we don’t even have a common color--black plays big in Silver Lake, not so big in the South Bay. But if we don’t have a citywide fashion code, we do have a series of local ordinances. The charming dissonance that is L.A.’s patchwork of townships and neighborhoods is reflected in the duds of its denizens. Those mystified by certain boundaries (Does Hollywood start at Western Avenue? Does the Westside end at Robertson Boulevard?) would do as well to glance at the ensembles of those around them as they would to pore over the Thomas Guide.
In Boyle Heights, on streets lined with farmacias and gorgeous murals, tight skirts and tube tops bloom in the city’s native colors--hibiscus and mango, bougainvillea and passionflower, cropped and quilted, swirled and clinging in cha-cha-cha extremes. Mariachi urban.
Not 10 miles away, however, the Silver Lake look could not be more different. Noir chic, gallery cool--the lines are minimalist and utilitarian, as sleek and calm as the reservoir on a windless bright morning. Sunglasses flash darkly behind plumes of cigarette smoke, while sensibly expensive shoes pad toward Netty’s or the dog park. At home in Prada and Neutra, Silver Lake habitues are the more sedate, sophisticated cousins of the Los Feliz crowd, with whom they rub tattooed elbows and thumb rings at the Vista or Trader Joe’s on Hyperion Avenue.
Sunset lights the miles from Los Feliz to Hollywood in original neon, and Prada morphs into Dolce & Gabbana, of the flashy variety. Hollywood is Hollywood, despite its recent consumer-conscious attempt to be Old Town Pasadena or whatever it is those city planners have in mind. Feathers and safety pins in the oddest places, colors not found in even Technicolored nature, tiger-striped sandals and lots of thigh--Hollywood is the roaming grounds of the club kids, often too cool or too hot to wear black. The Strip was the city’s first fashion runway, where starlets, decked out by their studios in Paris fashions, tripped amid the flashbulbs’ white glare from Ciro’s to the Mocambo to the Trocadero. In the ‘60s, the Strip went hippie, and now it’s an information-age melting pot: a bit rocker-glam, a bit Armani, with some streetwalking grit thrown in.
Over the hill and across the dale is Westlake Village. Like Los Angeles, the neighboring valleys are multifaceted fashion worlds, but Westlake’s poster child is the suburban debutante with her sweater set, strappy sandals, Fendi bag and smile of smug satisfaction. Let the club kids dress up, dress down, go Goth, go punk, go retro, go punk again. At the malls of America, from sea to shining sea, it is the Valley girl who prevails.
Back on the Strip, one can look down Fairfax Avenue, running south straight as a pool cue, slicing through all the major east-west thoroughfares--Santa Monica, Melrose, Beverly--and carrying with it the style detritus of the hip. How else can you explain the slightly skanky but undeniably cool element that lurks in the doorways of the city’s most venerable Jewish neighborhood, which starts around Beverly Boulevard? Canter’s is the main draw--by day a nice Jewish deli, by night a 24-hour haven for industry scribblers, dance-til-dawn die-hards and whoever else might be too restless, or haunted, to go home after the clubs and bars close. Black lace and leather, full-body tattoos, dyed hair and sequined chokers--think Madonna at the Pyramid Club in the late ‘70s. Then make it a little bit scarier, but with really great knishes.
Farther west is the rarefied air of Brentwood and Santa Monica, once the final stops for couture from Bullock’s Wilshire, now unapologetic in their dependence on Fred Segal and vintage wear from Snap. Santa Monica may be a beach town, but the tourists are the ones not wearing leather pants. Venice Beach, virtually indescribable to the uninitiated, takes its topography and meteorology more seriously, with a devotion to bared flesh, nominally decorated here and there in spandex. Venice is nirvana for the “Baywatch” devotee.
To be sure, there are many other beaches, but most have their own set of standards--Manhattan Beach, for example, is a mix of too-tanned collegiate and the Olympic volleyball sets, Redondo is a working pier (even the local daquiri bar is full of fishing types), and Long Beach is in the midst of a suburban-bohemian make-over, resulting in a lot of pre-’70s vintage, Hawaiian shirts and J. Crew Mommy-wear.
But Venice, like the Daughters of the American Revolution, takes its heritage very seriously. Preservation of the scene, with its rich cinematic history, is priority No. 1, and if hot pants and crocheted bikinis are the necessary tools, so be it. Beach balls and tiaras, neon orange tank tops and transparent cover-ups, ankle tattoos and sparkly name necklaces for the ladies, gold chains and pit bulls for the men. Whatever it takes to keep this party rolling.
But even in Venice, threading through the crowds of disparate crowds of visitors from Thousand Oaks and Pasadena, from Culver City and El Sereno, one sees the impossibility of describing this city, even in fashion terms. Los Angeles unrolls between mountains and sea like a tapestry woven by lunatics and savants, like a quilt pieced together in cellars and studios and on the moon. It is a city, a county, a region that categorically refuses to be categorized, where trends of nonconformity begin and are followed to the death. The stars still trip across the red carpets wearing couture, and you can see sunglasses everywhere you look, but what the world thinks we look like barely brushes reality. The human imagination has its limitations, after all.
