SoLA's "Awesome" serape placemats and coasters

SoLA's "Awesome" serape placemats and coasters

LA Market Report

We just wrapped up coverage of the sprawling Los Angeles Fashion Market, which included five wholesale showroom buildings in downtown L.A., as well as six independent trade show. (You can read all about it here.)

While making my rounds I came across some fun items—some new product launches and some that were just new discoveries to me.

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Calvin Rucker Spring 2016

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Bretboho bags

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Korut Studio jewelry

At Brand Assembly at the Cooper Design space, I ran into Calvin Rucker designers Joie Rucker and Caroline Calvin, who walked me through their Spring ’16 line, which was inspired by sirens--or, as Calvin describes it, "mermaids gone bad.”

The designers explored the idea of making things appear to be underwater by laying chiffon over original prints designed by UK-born, LA-based artist Steven Bryan. There’s a black-and-white coral print layered under a white chiffon dress, as well as a moody print created from an aerial shot of a stormy sea.

The two recently split their denim offerings into a separate group to give retailers who might not buy a designer collection the option to add Calvin Rucker denim to their mix.

This season, four-year-old accessories and lifestyle show Coeur moved to a new location on the mezzanine of the newly opened Alexandria Ballrooms. The space looked like a large, beautifully curated boutique. (In fact, during the opening-night party on Oct. 12, passersby on Spring Street looked up to see the merchandise brightly lit behind the space’s floor-to-ceiling windows and asked if they could come in to shop.)

Here’s a little of what I found:

Bretboho yoga bags, totes and cosmetic bags in cute prints, designed by Shaina Fast, owner of the It Matters Studio showroom.

Korut Studio’s made-in-America jewelry line is designed in Berkeley, Calif., by owner Lisa Kaufman, who has the pieces 3-D printed and then cast in silver or bronze.

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Love Tanjane

Love Tanjane designer Sonia Erneux started out designing lingerie and evolved the collection to include loungewear and now caftans, dresses, tops and other casualwear, which is all hand-dyed in Ojai, Calif. Erneax’s Spring collection has great floaty caftans in a made-in-USA cotton gauze that looks cool enough to withstand another LA heatwave. The line’s newest fabrication is Japanese cupro rayon that feels like a weightier silk. Erneax showed me a tie-dyed style with pockets that are deep enough to actually carry your necessities (like a cellphone) and set low enough that you can still belt the dress.

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Jack Gomme leather handbags

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Jack Gomme coated linen totebags

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Mohinders shoes

Jack Gomme’s made-in-France handbag came in deliciously Parisian colors. But the company’s coated linen totebags looked LA-cool to me.

Lawyer-turned “peddler” Michael Paratore had a great story about cross-crossing India in search of the maker of the sandals that eventually became his Mohinders footwear line.

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Dasein fragrances

Coeur also features lifestyle products such as candles and fragrance. I discovered there’s the perfumer behind the Dasein fragrance collection lives in my East Los Angeles neighborhood (I will look out for my best-smelling neighbor). There are found fragrances named for the four seasons and inspired by memories and admittedly inspirational places like California’s Big Sur.

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4160 Tuesdays

I had a great time talking to another perfumer Sarah McCartney, whose 4160 Tuesdays bills its scents as “proper perfumes made in London.” McCartney was a wealth of scent information and her collection was beautifully presented in dainty teacups. The scents have hilariously descriptive names like “The Sexiest Scent on the Planet, Ever (IMHO)” and “The Inevitable Crimes of Passion.” Each comes with a story that describes the inspiration for the scent.

And I caught up with Sarah Stein, partner in SoLA (Sisters of Los Angeles), the Southern California-based gift company that finds inspiration in California’s neighborhoods to put a stylish spin on home décor. The company recently branched out beyond California to create other city- and neighborhood- (or borough, for you New Yorkers) themed items.