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.
"You know," he continues, "I just blew my top a few minutes ago. I haven't done that in years. One of our salespeople was drinking coffee and waiting on someone. There's a lot of energy being used up when you're sipping coffee--it's an addiction. How can you take care of a person? All the energy has to go to the customer." The poor guy getting his caffeine fix might as well have been flipping off the customer. But Segal's extreme approach to customer relations results in something uniquely pleasant in the world of the cutting edge. The salespeople at Fred Segal may be hipper than hip, but they are never hipper than thou.
When Segal gets going on the philosophical basis of his commercial enterprise, he can sound like a well-spoken, benevolent pothead. He's a peace activist from way back and a friend of the be-nice maestro, the Dalai Lama. Years ago, the Dalai Lama and 20 Tibetan monks stayed at Segal's Malibu residence for a month. "It changed my life," he says. "And I changed theirs. They were terribly unbalanced in their eating habits--they drank Coca-Cola and ate potato chips and lots of overcooked meat. I brought experts to the house and taught them vegetarianism." Throughout his life, Segal has put serious amounts of money and personal effort where his mouth is. "The different organizations I participate in are all motivated to help forward changes in the planet and in all of us in the direction of healing," he says.
Segal then unleashes his version of Peace, Love and Understanding for Dummies, toward the end of which he declares, "Spirituality has come to America. Our culture is changing. You hear it in the music and see it in drama. If you pay attention, then you know what to do in clothes or in hairstyling to be a part of that transformation."
This is where Fred Segal the person's spiritual quest intersected with Fred Segal the store's ability to supply you with what you ought to be wearing if you want to sell that godforsaken script: "We are responsible for helping our clients feel the energy of what's going on so they can feel good about themselves. A really good designer of any kind is going to tell the people what's already in them so they can express it better and then evolve it. Most designers design items for novelty. Novelty fashions have no meaning in my life. I create fashion that's a way of life, a philosophy. It becomes part of a person's energy, part of their skin."
There you have it. The inhabitants of an envied metropolis on the cutting edge of modern American culture have to look the part. You might as well just go spend a few hours shopping at Fred Segal, pick out your favorite color of Juicy Couture's latest velour and hand over the plastic. Or, now that Fred Segal Beauty has opened its new spa, you can get a Botox treatment or a Foto-Facial. The spa is, explains Fred Segal Beauty CEO Michael Baruch in the promotional material, "a haven of peace and intimacy" complementing the already successful salon, which is "an energy source."
In person, the spike-haired, very smart and likable Baruch eschews discussions of energy and admits that back when he was an upscale Valley kid he always regarded Fred Segal as the height of cool. He was, as it turned out, destined to become the exemplary Fred Segal entrepreneur. Armed with a law degree and business experience and partnered with his friend, hair stylist and Sebastian veteran Paul De'Armas, Baruch cold-called Fred Segal's office and got a flat no, which turned to a yes when Fred himself, having gotten a positive read on De'Armas from pal Gene Chacov sat down with the two guys who would create Fred Segal Beauty. "One with a good business head and one really creative. It's a combination you can't beat," says Segal. "It's the way I am by myself."
Baruch and De'Armas followed Fred Segal Beauty with an agency, whose stylists have become celebritized themselves through alliances with stars like George Clooney, and workshops, which spread the brand name with the speed of gossip, and now Fred Segal Spa. Fred Segal Beauty et al. are deliberately located in Santa Monica, because this is, unbeknownst to the general population, the only real Fred Segal. Segal sold the Melrose property, and the use of "Fred Segal" over there will be phased out. Ron Herman, Segal's nephew and very first boutique owner, pointedly identifies his store as Ron Herman Melrose, no longer Ron Herman at Fred Segal Melrose. Of course, to the throngs who lunch and shop at the Melrose location it's still Fred Segal, but Segal himself disagrees.
"I'm Fred Segal and I don't go there," he laughs. "Melrose is more surface, more trendy, more chaotic." Appropriately, perhaps, it's seen as the slightly hipper spot and Santa Monica is appreciated for being mellower. "Santa Monica is so much more important just geographically, for health reasons," says Segal. "People can breathe the ocean air. This will be the only Fred Segal. There's no reason we can't do $100 million here. A hundred million here is much more profitable than $800 million in 10 cities. And it's way more fun."
Segal points to the wall in the store's health food cafe, where the words "I am You. You are Me. We are They" appear. "Our culture is in transformation. What we do here, how we conduct ourselves, how we treat our customers, is going to help make that change. 'I am you. You are me. We are they.' What does that mean? There's no they. It's all we."
And we are on the cutting edge.
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