Buying Into Hometown Style

Faint rays of early evening sun filter through the palm trees in the courtyard of the historic Los Altos apartment building where guests are arriving for the first runway show of L.A. fashion week. Veteran retailer Shauna Stein is sipping white wine out of a plastic cup and soaking in the scene. In her 25 years in the fashion business, the co-owner of the On Beverly Blvd. boutique has made the runway rounds in Milan, Paris and New York, but never here.

She meets a stylist named Kristen with big, permed blond hair, who’s wearing a turquoise tennis sweater, red gym shorts, yellow fishnet stockings and pink Converse high tops. It’s a carefully calculated mix of cool that intrigues the 51-year-old Stein.

The “mix” is one of her favorite buzzwords, because to keep her advantage as a small retailer, Stein is constantly interpreting, editing and combining designer looks for her customers. She’s earned a reputation for being able to pick apart a collection and find clothes that are edgy, but not so edgy as to be unwearable.

She’s also known for her personal touch. Stein claims more than 200 loyal clients, who occasionally call her at home to ask what top to wear with a bottom. “I don’t always remember names,” she says. “But I do remember what’s in everyone’s closet.”

In the courtyard of the Los Altos on Wilshire Boulevard, Stein has gathered an audience, and the first of many fashion musings flow: “Shopgirls in Europe look better than the richest women in L.A. because they understand from an early age to buy less and buy better.”

It was her first trip to Italy in 1972 that changed her eye forever. “I saw a way of dressing and mixing clothing that inspired my career,” says the always animated Stein, whose sentences tumble out rapidly, often punctuated at the end with an infectious, high-pitched, open-mouth laugh.

The crowd files into the lobby for Rami Kashou’s show. His elegant, bias-cut jersey gowns dazzle Stein, who sizes up the fabric, the finishing, the fit. “Soft dressing is going to be very important,” she says.

After the presentation, it’s clear that the designer has won her over. “He’s so cute, he’s delicious,” she coos, her enormous green eyes opening even wider. “I didn’t expect to like an L.A. fashion show.”

Women have been looking to Stein for style advice since the 1970s when she was a buyer for Ron Ross on Ventura Boulevard and the late 1980s when she owned her own store at the Beverly Center, introducing such designers as John Galliano, Dolce & Gabbana and Moschino to the legging-wearing L.A. public.

Buying was easier back then. Each season brought a few trends that women followed diligently. Hems went up and down and wardrobes followed.

These days, fashion moves so fast that Stein herself has trouble keeping up. “The Internet has brought us to this place where you really have to do your homework so you’re not caught up in trends that are going to be over in 20 minutes,” she says.

Stores typically buy clothes twice a year, for spring and fall. But now, trends change so quickly that Stein feels like she has to restock every 60 days to stay current.

The fall show schedule began back in February in New York. But by the time those clothes hit stores, Stein fears they could be out of date. So this season, she vowed to check out her hometown offerings for the first time.

Because L.A. fashion week is last on the international calendar, attending the shows here could give Stein an opportunity to buy fresher looks.

Stein has been lost for 40 minutes trying to find the factory space in Culver City where Richard Tyler is showing. “I wound up at the marina,” she says, arriving uncharacteristically late. She checks any frustration at the door, remembering how difficult it was to get to Gaultier’s shows in the ‘80s, which were held outside Paris. “You took your life into your hands.”

As the lights go down, she pulls out a notepad. Short jackets, sheer skirts and sexy dresses parade by as Stein’s eyes play fashion tennis, darting back and forth along the runway.

“That bag!” she says excitedly, pointing to a brown leather saddlebag on a model’s shoulder. “This is extremely salable for L.A. He really knows his client.”

Whether it will work in Stein’s store--which has everything from $75 T-shirts to $5,000 coats--is another story.

She has to consider her clients, who span three generations.

The Tyler collection is young and tightfitting. “Skinny is the biggest part of the culture in L.A.,” says Stein, who has a fuller figure herself. “But I’m not a [size] 4, 6, 8 store; I’m a [size] 6, 8, 12 store. I try to allow more medium-sized women to buy fashion.”

After making two U-turns on Cole Avenue in Hollywood, Stein spots number 1051. “You can go to some of the creepiest places and find clothes,” she says sizing up the dingy building. “You should see where I found Galliano in London. I went up six flights of stairs in the grimiest walk-up.”

She takes a front-row folding chair for the first show from Deseo23, a design collective of four recent grads of Brooks College in Long Beach. The smell of incense is hanging in the air over the runway--a bed of dirt and red clay with abstract sculptures for props.

“I’m searching for that thrill of finding the next thing. I’m almost like an addict,” Stein says, running her hand through her long brown hair, which she says has never been cut short.

A half hour ticks by and the show still hasn’t started. Stein fans herself with her notepad. The Indian chants that a DJ is spinning are beginning to take their toll. “This music is driving me crazy,” she snaps.

Models finally start coming out from behind the gray scrim. They strike important-looking poses in corduroy pants to the tune of a song with one annoying refrain: “Little black spiders.”

It’s looking less likely that Deseo23 will be the next Galliano.

At the end, Stein applauds politely before making a beeline for the door. She says, “It took four people to make that collection?”

By 3:30, her black Jeep Cherokee is headed east on Santa Monica Boulevard. With time to kill, she is easily persuaded to go shopping. She’s the first one to offer that she “doesn’t get out much,” so she’s thrilled to have time to wander in Los Feliz, a new neighborhood for her. She lives in Beverly Glen in L.A. and most of her activity is between home and her store, across from the Beverly Center.

“This was me at age 25,” she says, tugging at a pair of white pants trimmed with antique lace. “That’s the worst thing about getting old. You can’t wear the same things.” These days, her personal style includes a “feminine/masculine mix” of long skirts and boots, often by Jean-Paul Gaultier or Roberto Cavalli. She carries a black, bohemian-looking Jamin Peuch crocheted purse she bought in Paris in the late 1980s. She says, “I just don’t want it to die.”

As soon as she opens the program at the martinMartin show, she knows what to expect. “Black Japanese viscose,” Stein says, pointing to the printed description of the first outfit. “That means intellectual.”

“Intellectual” is the word she uses to describe the style created by designers such as Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto in the 1980s. It’s avant-garde, often all-black with severe shapes. It was the one trend Stein never bought into.

She’s right about the show, which is black and serious, with pants and coats that look like they have moth holes in them. Outside on the street, she says, “My only question is does intellectual live in L.A.? Because I just can’t sell clothes here that aren’t sexy.”

“This is like the Algonquin of fashion,” Stein says exchanging a tip about the latest denim line with a buyer from Alabama who’s sitting with her at Koi restaurant.

The wait for the Anthony Castro’s V show to start is nearly two hours long, but Stein is enjoying herself, devouring California rolls and passing out business cards faster than a Vegas dealer. She says “hello” to everyone from Loree Rodkin, a friend of Cher whom she’s known for years, to Jennifer Klegg, who works for a new sportswear company Stein discovered at CaliforniaMart just this morning.

She’s an expert at networking but doesn’t seem driven by the will to sell as much as the genuine desire to help people. She may be a career fashionista, but there’s a certain down-to-earth quality about Stein, who grew up in Salt Lake City, the daughter of parents who “shopped at JCPenney,” and is a practicing Mormon.

She raised two children from her husband’s previous marriage and is most definitely the mothering type. One reason she wanted to attend the L.A. shows was to be a resource for young designers.

By the time the show starts, it’s almost an afterthought to the mingling. Stein proclaims the collection mediocre. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but these people need to hear it.”

She’s dragged husband Marty, a Harley-riding former apparel manufacturer, to a desolate-looking building on Spring Street for the Jared Gold show. The two, who have been married 30 years, both love to talk--especially about clothes. They sit across the runway from a woman wearing what appears to be a pink towel on her head and giggle like teenagers.

Stein watches the show intently. A juggler and a fire-eater come down the runway, ahead of two models wearing one dress to look like Siamese twins. She’s seen it all before.

“It was fun and creative, but it’s not what I do,” she says afterward. Still, she sees the value of it. “The fashion business needs the context of collections like these, and there must be a market for it,” she says. “The girl in the towel strikes me as someone who probably wears this stuff.”

It’s like a fashion family reunion at the Cornell Collins show. Stein’s sister, Cynthia Kezerian, is in town to shop market week for her own store, CJ Sport, in Park City, Utah. Tonight, she’s along for the wild runway ride.

Stein bumps into some of her “hippie friends” from the 1970s, including Jose Irizarry, who was a stylist at Cassandra, the hair salon that shared the block with Ron Ross in the San Fernando Valley.

“We all became really creative because we were sitting in the middle of a cowboy town,” Stein says. “We would be doing clothes and hair and a horse would walk by our window. There was a coral in the back of the store.”

Michael Baruch, chief executive of Fred Segal Beauty is supervising hair and makeup for the show. He comes over to say hi. “When I was growing up in L.A. in the 1980s, I don’t know whose name I heard more in my household, Shauna Stein’s or Stevie Nicks’,” he says. “She had her finger on what was hot and what was not. And she was the only game in town.”

After fashion week, Stein is so exhausted, she goes to work at the store one morning in her pajamas. She’ll revisit Kashou, Tyler and Collins, looking at their collections in the showroom, before placing any orders. And she’ll definitely hit the L.A. shows again next season, reserving money in her budget to buy here because “I have to be in and out of a trend before a season is over.”

As for the other designers she saw, “They need to do their homework,” Stein says. “Fashion is really fun and creative, but the bottom line today is that you have to have someone to sell it to.”