As much business as we do in Los Angeles, it is surprising how little time we spend there. Although we stay in a single stretch a week and a half annually, including the set up and vetting, at the Los Angeles Antiques Show, the majority of that time is spent inside Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, the show venue. I can tell you intimately about the commute to and from, and can describe in tedious detail the inside of the Hangar. By the time the show is over and we’ve made one or two house calls on clients, we are bagged out and ready to return to San Francisco. Our trade in English antiques, as my 20 or so devoted readers will have by now divined, is not terribly glamorous.
But, then, what is? Our time on and proximity to a number of red carpets over the years made us realize early on that a place in the sun is always brief, with hard work in preparation before followed by a long period of dénouement. This may sound by turns both jaded and spoiled, and so, I suppose, we are. What, then, is the linkage between overall world-weariness, Los Angeles, and the road trip of today’s title? Simply that we drove to Los Angeles this last Thursday to deliver a couple of sold pieces to two designers in West Hollywood, with the 6 hour drive down Interstate 5 something I looked forward to, giving me a good long time to meditate. Times being what they are, meditation is a good counter to what one is tempted to do otherwise, which is to become overwhelmed with worry and anxiety. Fruitless pastimes, with worry tantamount to second-guessing God. Maybe not ‘simple’ in terms of linkage- how does ‘synchronic’ strike you?
I don’t know whether I was mentally in, as they say, a ‘good place’ once we arrived in LA, but traversing as we did the design district in West Hollywood I can say that, overall, the commercial activity would give rise to some distress. Vacant storefronts abound, with only a fraction of what had been long established antiques dealers now surviving. Moreover, long stretches of Melrose, Robertson, and La Cienaga that had formerly been the nearly exclusive province of the decorative arts have been taken over by apparel, with some, but by no means all of it, high style and/or couture.
We see this over and over, with established fine art and antiques venues displaced by fashion, with ‘why?’ the obvious question. Bond Street and Mount Street in London have experienced this blitz, as has Madison Avenue.
All this is a surprise to me, with so many fashion boutiques in San Francisco closing. Of course, fashion/couture has gone mass-market, and one has to assume that San Francisco is not the glam capital that LA is. Those red carpet shots at the Academy Awards must give fashion retail a considerable shot in the arm. Keith and I need to hoick ourselves up and move back onto the red carpet. I wonder if we could bring a Pembroke table with us?