Dressing up on a budget

Dressing up on a budget
It was my first trip here and what did I do? Not the Getty, not Walt Disney Concert Hall, not Hollywood. I went shopping.

Sprawling over 43 miles of San Pedro Bay, the Port of Los Angeles has the highest shipping container throughput in the country, and women’s apparel ranks among the top five goods landed there. It’s a material world, and I was a material girl with a half-empty suitcase to fill.

“LA is where many retail trends originate,’’ says resident Christine Silvestri, whose publishing career (and wardrobe) took a turn for the exciting when she switched to fashion and founded Urban Shopping Adventures. When budget is no barrier, Silvestri takes shoppers to Melrose Place at the west end of Melrose Avenue, where the stores are in the Diane von Furstenberg and Fred Segal stratosphere. Segal in particular is a lightning rod for hot new designers.
Between Beverly and West 3d, Robertson Boulevard was an off-the-radar fashion mecca for celebrities that has become a paparazzi stakeout. Kitson is its re tail god, with Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Lisa Kline, and European stores like Odd Molly on two densely packed blocks. Shoppers lunch under the market umbrellas of The Ivy, the see-and-be-seen restaurant where sightings have ranged from Dustin Hoffman to Lindsay Lohan’s car wreck.

But aspirational shoppers — you want the look but cannot pay $400 for a halter dress — should head to LA’s Fashion District. Bounded by 7th, Spring, and San Pedro streets and the Santa Monica Freeway, the area pulses with wholesale and retail merchants covering 100 city blocks. At its heart are three wholesale towers, California Market Center, Cooper Design Space, and New Mart, whose showrooms open to the public on the last Friday of the month. (California Market Center has retail stores on its lobby level. Shooz, the district’s best shoe retailer, and The Fashion Bookstore, with the world’s widest collection of couture-related reading, are here.) Time it right, and you can buy samples of limited-run, beautifully made clothes by BCBG Max Azria or Rory Beca that sell at stores like Fred Segal for hundreds of dollars more.