Distressed

While there are some cities that definitely hold the torch as ‘most fashionable’, my esteemed friends on the western coast of the U.S. in fact do not. It isn’t that people in Los Angeles don’t know how to dress, it’s just that the majority of the people who get the attention from Los Angeles (ie: Paris Hilton, hipsters who started smoking too much pot and decided that the cast from ‘Almost Famous’ was on to something and every B-list actress still slugging through the City of Angels in her Ugg boots) don’t. Each year I keep a close eye on LA Fashion Week and every now and then there are one or two lines that cause me to take a second look and right now I’m second (and third, and fourth and fifth…) looking at Raquel Allegra. Taking what she learned from stints at both Barney’s and Issey Miyake and turning out a whole lot of distressed, flowy, neutral goodness, Allegra’s shredding, tie-dying and draping shape up one hell of a sexy collection. Although at first glance one might pass off Allegra’s designs as simply a DIY project, they are in fact closer to art pieces as every shred is meticulously planned and the process can take upwards of 10 hours per garment.

With talent like Allegra, Scott Sternberg (Band of Outsiders), David Hershberger and Mitch Moseley (Endovanera) and Jerrod Cornish and Keith Richardson (Corpus) making people take their own second glances at LA fashion, it might not be too long before Los Angeles is able to slide it’s way in with the cool kids on campus.