Vivienne Westwood to Open L.A. Store on Melrose
In May, iconic English designer Vivienne Westwood will be debuting a self-named store in Los Angeles in a two-story building at 8320 Melrose Ave.
It will be Westwood’s first retail American retail appearance in nine years, according to the label’s creative director and the designer’s husband, Andreas Kronthaler. The Vivienne Westwood shop in New York closed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
The Melrose Avenue store will offer all of the Vivienne Westwood labels, including Red Label, Gold Label, Man and Anglomania, as well as a new line called World’s End. The new line will recycle some of Westwood’s classic styles, which have sold well at her London store on Kings Road.
Kronthaler said Los Angeles will be a good fit for the influential Westwood, who is regarded as the mother of punk and new wave fashion. “L.A. is less straight than New York and more open-minded,” Kronthaler said.
The Westwood store is located a few blocks west of the pink cube-shaped building that houses the Paul Smith boutique. But Westwood’s strip of Melrose is not a fashion block quite yet. Across the street are furniture and lighting stores. One block east is the location for hip restaurant Philippe by Philippe Chow.
However, the Westwood building has a fashion history. Eco-designer Linda Loudermilk was developing the 5,000-square-foot building to be an emporium for her luxury styles constructed out of environmentally friendly materials. Yet the store never opened, and Loudermilk filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2008. Developer Hersel Saledy later took the building out of bankruptcy. Vivienne Westwood made plans to move into the building in late 2009.
Veteran commercial real estate broker Chuck Dembo said Westwood’s popular brand could determine how successful the boutique will be. Retail traffic is strictly driven by destination shopping on much of Melrose Avenue, according to Dembo, of Beverly Hills–based Dembo & Associates. “No one is walking from place to place,” he said of the popular street.—Andrew Asch with reporting by Deborah Belgum
