Don't count L.A. out yet
Good news from the city's cool maker frontlines
Welcome to Concorde, Blackbird Spyplane’s “women’s vertical” that the fellas love as well. Every edition is archived here.
Our Cool Mom Style Guide lives here.
The Home Goods Index is a compendium of house-enhancing heat including lamps, ceramics, rugs and furniture.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here. Spyfriends just came through with recs for Albania, New Orleans and Manchester.
L.A. … it’s one of the truly great cities … and it’s in the middle of a prolonged mojo downswing.
That’s the report we’ve gotten in conversations with any number of friends of ours who live there, anyway. Part of it is aftershocks from the fires… Part of it is hard times in the film & TV industry… But the vibes are off, and morale is low. Some friends of ours have moved. Others tell us they’re thinking about it.
But we love L.A. and always will. Untold cool people live there, and from a specifically Spyplane POV, some of the best independent designers, artists and boutiques call the city home, too. Some of them deny there’s anything off with the vibes in town at all. Just yesterday here in the East Bay we saw Phillip Proyce of L.A.’s Lady White Co., who was in town visiting for the weekend. He told us he feels zero mojo downswing in L.A. whatsoever: he’s too busy remodeling LW-C’s Hyperion flagship shop, due to open this August.
We just published our smash hit Ultimate Guide to the Bay Area, and one very sick thing about the Bay we didn’t mention is that it’s a mere 6-hour drive or 1-hour flight to Los Angeles.
I (Erin) made the OAK-BUR round trip recently for studio visits with a couple excellent under-the-radar L.A. fashion and furniture designers I admire, and to dig up some recon for you on:
home goods and functional frivolities
sick made-in-L.A. furniture
vintage clothes and under-the-radar makers
& more!
Let’s get to it —
In the pantheon of Concorde Visionaries I’ve had the honor of interviewing, there’s SC103, Eckhaus Latta and Julia Heuer.
My No. 1 reason for this L.A. trip was a chance to tap in with another singular designer, whose talents span both clothing and some ingenious home goods: