Pinpointing the Trendiest Shopping Districts in L.A.

So where are the hot, new L.A. stores this holiday season?

a. Beverly and Martel

b. Silver Lake

c. Melrose West

d. La Brea North

e. Robertson

How about all of the above?

Unlike years past, there doesn't appear to be a single trendy street or neighborhood in this city of trendy shopaholics. Instead, style-setters and the media say there's a buzz all over. Sort of.

"There's different hot streets for different tastes. Some are more family-oriented, some are more fashion," said Jennifer Wilson, style writer for Los Angeles magazine. "That's the beauty of L.A. - there's a street for all those different niches."

In recent years, Los Feliz got a lot of attention as one of the coolest neighborhoods in town, taking over from the perennially hip La Brea Avenue, which reigned in the early '90s after nudging aside Melrose.

Perhaps it's a reflection of how L.A.'s hipness has matured in recent years, but Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz, La Brea, Melrose and Robertson Boulevard are all considered popular in their own way.

One emerging address is Silver Lake Boulevard, which has an eclectic, if somewhat limited, row of vintage furniture stores and restaurants. Los Angeles magazine recently spotlighted Silver Lake and several spots on the Westside, including Swarthmore Avenue in Pacific Palisades and Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.

David Youkhannah, stylist for the Cloutier Agency, also likes the area now known as Melrose West, along with Robertson near Beverly, the east side of Beverly, and Sunset Plaza.

"What makes a place hot is when both sides of the street have stores - like Melrose - where you have Daryl K, Miu Miu and Fred Segal," he said. "When you have a powerhouse of different stores, the area tends to take off."

Youkhannah said shoppers are attracted to areas that offer something new and different from the usual mall offerings. "There's no more elite fashion," he said. "Anyone who has a MasterCard, Visa or American Express can wear Prada. It's very accessible."

Brand-new Angeleno magazine chose to spotlight the intersection of Beverly and Martel Avenue in its premiere September/October issue. The magazine calls the area "particularly hot," with boutiques like Enno, Sage and Diavolina featuring eclectic clothing targeted to trendy customers tired of Prada and Ralph Lauren offerings.

Beverly and Martel is the future home of L.A. Eyeworks' second L.A. store - as well as being down the street from that old standby eatery, El Coyote. Most of the other boutiques the magazine spotlights have been in the area for years.

With L.A. Eyeworks moving into the area in March, the corner's status is solidified as an area to watch. L.A. Eyeworks spokeswoman Ruth Handel said the neighborhood combines an adventurous and intelligent sensibility.

"The neighborhood is in an incredible flux, with the Grove at the Farmers Market coming," she said. "It's becoming a real destination point for the individualist."

Boutique Enno's co-owner Ukay said Angeleno's mention put the store on the map among cutting-edge shoppers. Ukay selected the location because of its good fit with other stores, as well as the reasonable leasing rates.

Meanwhile, Women's Wear Daily has been trumpeting North La Brea, up the street from the renowned strip between Beverly and Sixth Street. Another area the fashion daily has written about recently is Melrose West, between Fairfax Avenue and La Brea.

The job of creating a hot shopping street often falls to people who want to open shops off the beaten track. These people take advantage of better lease rates and a hipness factor they won't find in malls or on streets overrun by brand-name stores.

Nikki Serianni, manager of the Malia Mills store on West Melrose, said the owners opened in the area in September because the fresh neighborhood is similar to the store's location in New York's Nolita - a new downtown neighborhood north of Little Italy. Serianni said mentions in Elle magazine and WWD brought in new customers, but the store prefers to rely on word of mouth.

It can be hard to determine years in advance what the next hot street will be. In the mid '90s, Los Feliz started getting mentioned, but with only the Dresden cocktail bar, House of Pies, and a movie theater, the hype promised more than the reality. Then two or three years ago, Skylight Books, the Fred 62 diner, and designer Monah Li joined the strip, and the buzz was created for real.

The actual process of creating a viable, popular and trendy shopping street requires the necessary ingredients of location, selection and that indefinable hipness. The process is sensitive, tenuous, and hardly predictable.

It must start with a coffee shop, says Marcela Washington, celebrity stylist and image consultant for the Fred Segal Agency.

Washington has a particular interest in neighborhoods that redefine themselves. She's currently working in Westwood, doing image design and fashion workshops for the new W Hotel. She also works as a celebrity stylist and spends a lot of time shopping in the streets.

"It starts with creating a lifestyle interest in the neighborhood. A coffee shop sets the pace. That's where you get the buzz," she said.

Some Angelenos are tired of the search for the next hip shopping enclave and are finding that the best Christmas shopping is sometimes in rather unlikely places.

LA Weekly Managing Editor Kateri Butler has noticed that the kind of stores that cool people used to scoff at are suddenly getting hip - like Target and Mervyn's. "It's OK to admit you shop there," she said.

Ultimately, this holiday season's most successful shops maybe e-commerce sites that are easy to access, offer lots of choices and allow you to stay at your desk at work, or in your slippers and robe at home. They might not offer a Starbucks right next door, but people do like the convenience and the choices.

Butler said many of her own friends and colleagues are passing by the hip streets and going online. "EBay is the street they're shopping on," she said.