SCENE | Left House

Abbot Kinney has become a street of some critique over the past year or so. It kept getting better and cooler and posher, and then all of a sudden it started to not really feel like Abbot Kinney anymore. The tipping point for me was sometime between Surfing Cowboys leaving and Lucky Jeans arriving. But the street just scored a huge win last week when a small-box four-shop retail collective called Left House opened in an old Venice bungalow. Under one roof there's the extremely culty Japanese brand Kapital, Westbrook Maker (of former subterranean parking garage fame), H.O.W.L. and M. Cohen. My old friend Nick Fouquet, the dapper hatter behind Westbrook, showed me around this morning, and it's all superb. I seriously could live there.

Westbrook is bustling in their new above-ground digs, beyond their trademark hats they now have indigo-dyed scarves and bandanas and are retailing leather goods and fabrics that pair seamlessly with their old-fashioned hats.




Then...I got trapped in the Kapital space. I think for hours, but I'm not entirely sure.




I admittedly didn't spend as much time as I would have liked at H.O.W.L. or M. Cohen. I guess I'll have to go back. Darn.