California Dreamin'
Erewhon, the Brentwood Country Mart, December Shows, and 2024 Trends
Clockwise from Top.
Erewhon
It’s 2024! December flew by for us, not least because we flew out to California for the holidays. Our first stop was in Los Angeles, where we were lucky enough to stay at our friends place in Brentwood. Let me tell you, LA feels way less imposting when you don’t have to cross the 405 at all. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on the beach, basking in the sun. Back on the East Coast, Noemi is still asking to go to the “playa” even though it’s 35 degrees outside.
While there are a lot of benefits to living in far west Los Angeles, the retail scene there is quite nice. We got to spend some time in Erewhon, a first for Raquel. The tonic menu there is pretty epic: Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Glaze ($18)1 is the famous one, but there is also a raw animal smoothie, amino acid trip, and liver love.
The “add on” menu is a long list of ingredients most of which we have never heard of: tocos, lucuma, camu camu?
We walked out with two Coconut Dreams2, and handful of other chips and other sundries that Noemi just couldn’t live without.
The Country Marts
We also spent some quality time at the local Country Mart, enjoying some sunset tacos, enchiladas and other treats at sunset. The Brentwood location is a nice group of retail stores, restaurants and other necessities (a post office, barber shop), all centered around two separate outdoor courtyards where the kids can run around and spill ice cream everywhere without the parents needing to worry too much about them.
JS Rosenfield owns three Country Marts - Brentwood, Montecity and Marin. Koss owns the Malibu Country Mart. We tried doing some digging on the “country mart” retail concept (roughly defined as, family friendly outdoor shopping offering a diversified assortment of contemporary price point retailers), and it’s not clear to us how the concept ended up in California in the 1940’s. But’s a nice idea, something that we think could be exported to other warm weather locations on the East Coast.
We spent the second half of our holiday with Raquel’s family in Calistoga, but did not have the energy to stop by the Marin Country Mart and check out Hero Shop on the way up there from SFO. Noemi spiked a glass bottle of apple juice on the concrete floor of Gott’s and we decided we needed to hightail it out of Larkspur as fast as possible. (Toddler-dom has been everything that was foretold)
December Runway Shows Part I
The Row showed their Pre-Fall 24 collection with a spa-theme presentation, with many models wearing jelly sandals and towels around their neck.
As with any Row collection, there was plenty of oversized pieces, slouchy insouciance and plenty of clutches. And cloche’s, which we have been scouring Etsy to buy for Noemi.
The prices are still sky-high, but they are now making the case that their Margaux is equivalent to an entry-level Birkin Bag. A steal at only $4990!
December Runway Shows Part II
And speaking of LA, Balenciaga, which has been keeping a low profile since it’s last scandal, hosted a splashy show there for its FW24 collection. It was staged on Windsor Boulevard, famous for its mansions and view of the Hollywood sign.
They also debuted a new sneaker: the 10XL, available for pre-order at $1490. As wide as a boat, it makes the Triple S look downright svelte. It takes some of the themes Balenciaga has shown in their footwear, and supersized them even more.
And also speaking of Erewhon, they embedded an Erewhon collab in the collection, officially linking up with the now iconic speciality grocery store. And, if that is not enough, they also debuted their first high-jewelry collection (or as they call it, “fine bijoux”) in collaboration with Jacob & Co.
2024 Trends
Pinterest has a nice round up of their 2024 predictions based on this year’s search trends. It’s a really nice visualization of what they see different demographic cohorts looking for come next year.
Some of our favorites included Goth Cowboy:
Giddy up. There’s a new home trend in town. Meet Western goth: your soon-to-be décor obsession that will mix vintage Americana chic with deep, moody hues. Expect to see Gen Z and Boomers DIY in style with sultry touches, such as dark fringes and even darker paints. See you soon at the (gothic-inspired) saloon.
It noted that “Western Gothic” (+145%) and “Western bedding” (+310%) were trending.
We both read A LOT of trend reports for work, and it was nice to see a different take, all built on their proprietary data.
Links.
13yo boy is first ever to “beat” Tetris scoring 999999 and crashing the game.
Reviewing Alex Katz at the Guggenheim.
Pharrell’s debut collection is hitting stores - lv.com links here.
Strava’s 2023 Year in Sport trend report.
For still-recovering blackberry addicts.
(All of these links are posted here first)
One of our resolutions this year is to be better about sending out our weekly dispatches. Parenthood, work and life have been conspiring to keep us extremely busy but as they say, new year, new us.
Happy new year,
Raquel & Chris
Malk almond milk, banana, Rancho Meladuco dates, Vital Proteins vanilla collagen, Erewhon sea moss, Zuma Valley coconut crème, Maple Valley maple syrup, hyaluronic acid, strawberries, avocado, vanilla stevia, Driscoll's organic strawberry glaze
coconut water, raw almond milk, banana, kale, Zuma Valley® coconut meat, dates, cinnamon
Thanks for this lovely write up about the Country Marts. I hope you can make it back to visit the Marin location!