ChinaShop

This year, I’ve sworn off shopping for 365 days in favor of order, frugality, and a massive closet-life-purge. What’s a shopaholic to do in time of such dire need? One word, friends: window shopping. Any other year I would have said that I don’t “do” window shopping, that it’s a frivolous waste of precious time and there are far better things to do, such as shampooing one’s dog or sorting through receipts, for instance, but is no regular year so I decided to give it a go. I had to be careful to find the proper arena for this feat – something with just enough eye candy to stimulate, but nothing that would tug at my pursestrings too much. Melrose Avenue, or rather its most lively stretch between La Brea and Fairfax, seemed the logical answer – fun, familiar, but safely too colorful and hipster-friendly for my personal preference.

It was Valentine’s day – as I understand it, the celebration primarily belonging to chocolate, postcard, and flower companies, when they hold a midnight mass and chant over a massive bag of bloody recession money. Many Melrose shops also paid tribute to the gods of finance by bedecking their windows in red hears, balloons and tinsel, and dressing up mannequins in extra flirty party getups. Ten years ago, things would have been different. Melrose Avenue gained its popularity way back in the day as the counterculture’s answer to Rodeo Drive, its stores filled with the edgiest fashion, and its sidewalks swarming with all manner of alternative folk, rainbow-colored hair and all.  This was the place you went, under the constant threat of harsh peer scrutiny, for your atomic orange hair dye and your bondage pants.

The Melrose of today is vastly different, however. Gone are the staple freak shops like Retail Slut, Red Balls and Vinyl Fetish, with Starbucks and Urban Outfitters readily sprouted up in their stead. Also gone are the oddball novelty places like Wound and Wound and Joys and Toys. And the freaks themselves are gone too, replaced by the fedora-to-the-side crowd and tourists, some still expecting blazing mohawks to no avail. It’s easy to become bitter, wrinkle your nose at the changes and say that Melrose has sold out, assimilated to the mainstream, etc. True enough in some cases, but consider what today’s mainstream actually is and things will begin to make sense.

On my Valentine’s Day adventure I had an excellent macrobiotic lunch at M Cafe, ogled body jewelry at The House of Freaks, marveled at African fertility statues at Maya, waded through velvet and lace at Shrine Clothing, and made friends with some Japanese tourists. I saw enough vintage, mainstream and hipster clothes to last me well until my next window shopping trip. I didn’t traverse the alternative fashion mecca that once was, but saw its influence in the grommeted mini-dresses, studded heels and skull-print button downs displayed in practically every window. Alternative fashion stopped being alternative a long time ago. It was just that good.

Words and Photos by Zoe Ebb

 

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