Fred Segal: Legends of the Cutting Edge

Nicole Kidman, Ben Affleck, Winona Ryder, Leonardo Dicaprio, Meg Ryan. The list of stars who go there is longer than the list of those who don't. Fred Segal is the source for fashion and the primo incubator of next big things.

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What do you make of a place where a truly amazing number of major stars, people on whom fashion freebies are routinely heaped, actually go to shop (or shoplift, as the case may be)? Where the sight of a $10-million-a-picture actor or actress emerging with a king-size signature red, blue and white bag is so common that paparazzi do regular stakeouts? Where Cameron Diaz, avatar of cutting edge, appears so often she's its virtual patron saint? The ultimate fashion destination known as Fred Segal is a Hollywood institution on the order of the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is the place where Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Keanu Reeves and Colin Farrell go to buy the latest item at full, jaw-dropping markup. (One fashion diva famous for taking advantage of her status in the customary manner was recently overheard insisting on getting a discount--to no avail. Fred Segal's preeminence in the competitive field of fashion-forwardness trumps even celebrity self-importance.) Earl Jean, the avant-garde of low-rise, was launched here. So was Hard Candy, whose blue nail polish Alicia Silverstone waved at David Letterman. So were Sparkles, the hair accessories that Jennifer Aniston--and hence the rest of the world--adored.

Fred Segal is so innately L.A. that most people know what it is without really knowing much about it. How has this store with only two locations, on Melrose and in Santa Monica, held its trendsetter status not only in Los Angeles but nationwide for close to four decades--an eternity in cutting-edge time? How did it get to this exalted position to begin with? For that matter, is there, or was there ever, a person named Fred Segal?

There is indeed such a person, and all things pertaining to the store derive from him. Segal is technically in his seventies now, though you wouldn't guess it by looking at him--he's sleek, agile, rosy-cheeked and high-octane--or by the tone of his voice, which has an ageless timbre. He cheerfully dates himself with a summary of his retail accomplishments. "I created fashion jeans. That was my premise," he says. "I got the idea from Levi Strauss. Levi's 501s were selling for $2.39 when I designed jeans 40 years ago, and I said, 'People want utility that's fashionable,' so I came out with jeans that had a fashion statement and were more expensive. I invented the hip-hugger. And then I took high-fashion fabrics and made jeans out of them. Men never wore pants made of velour or wide-wale corduroy or silk when I started in this business. People would say, 'You fag! You can't wear that!' So I got the fags to buy them from me and then I got these guys yelling at the fags to copy them. That's really how it started. My customers when I started were fags, blacks and a few Jews. Then it went to the masses."

No sense getting bothered about Segal's use of the word "fag." It rolls off his tongue with disarming assurance that nobody in 2003 could possibly take its antique, pejorative implications seriously. Segal enjoys giving the politically incorrect, cartoon version of his personal legend. His original idea was not, he goes on to explain, just fashion jeans, but the whole uniform--jeans, T-shirt and tennis shops--which is to say, the foundation of modern American dress right up to today. Comfort and functionality done up high-end and made cool. One of his early customers was his friend Jay Sebring, a man famous now for having been murdered with Sharon Tate by Charles Manson's minions in 1969, but known then for his high-fashion men's hair salon. Sebring's stylists wore Segal's clothes, and Sebring's movie-star clients bought them, too. Segal custom-made clothes for Elvis and Bobby Darin ("He'd buy 30 pair of black mohair hip-huggers at a time, at $60 apiece") and had every big star in the city wearing his stuff.

Fred Segal the store might have ended with the '60s were it not for the unusual way it was organized. It's basically a mini-mall of independent boutiques whose names often but not always begin with Fred Segal--as in Fred Segal Flair or Fred Segal Undercover--and whose constantly evolving roster of owners have seemed clairvoyantly selected for skill in market prophecy. As styles and owners have come and gone, the two Fred Segal locations have been endlessly reconfigured. This relevance-renewal system only sounds like chaos.

"Chaos," says Segal, "is manufactured by people who want to be uneasy all the time. I'm not uneasy. I think of it as a fun daytime nightclub. The owners have all been educated at the Fred Segal University. They understand the philosophy, that we treat people with honesty and integrity." That, by the way, constitutes Segal's entire marketing strategy. He does no advertising. A small announcement heralds a yearly sale, that's it. "Who we are, our energy, is our advertising," he says.

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