It's our heartfelt belief that a majority of youth fashion and retail-related trends originate on the west coast--specifically the Los Angeles market. Expanding on that point, there's no better place to take the pulse of America's young shoppers than Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, which is home to dozens of retailers. In the most unscientific of methods, simply stroll up and down the picturesque promenade any early evening and weave yourself between the throngs of tourists to follow the retail-driven paths of the local shoppers. We did this four times this week with the hope of understanding which retailers were drawing in the tastemaker crowd. Ideally, we were not looking for browsers, we were looking for actual shoppers with wallets out and multiple bags in hand. Any theory that Forever 21 had hit a peak last year was quickly nullified--the Forever 21 outpost in the promenade was packed every night with buyers, not just browsers. I must be getting a little old because it took me a good five to ten minutes to block out the absolutely glaring music coming out of the speakers in Abercrombie & Fitch before I could get a sense of the crowd. Overall, though I would have to say the A&F crowd was skewed slightly on the side of tourists (who were buying for the most part) rather than local young people. Without a doubt the most crowded store each night was the Apple store. Teens and twenty somethings were snapping up iPod Touches faster than you could say blueberry pancakes while several people were discussing the new soon to be released version of the iPhone with store staffers. It was a completely different story 50 feet down the street at the Helio outpost. Over the course of four separate evenings, I saw no more than five people in the store--and most of the time there were more employees manning the floor than shoppers in the store. Yikes. Back to clothing...American Eagle has a sizable piece of real estate, but again, we saw more tourists in there night in and night out than locals. Many of the tourists booked straight towards AE's relatively new undergarment aerie line which is competing head to head with Victoria's Secret's Pink line. Besides Forever 21, the highest concentration of local shoppers were found at Urban Outfitters, which by no small coincidence has quickly become one of the more popular specialty outposts for college students nationally over the past year and a half. Other little tidbits of info--the Levi's store was practically empty each night--the audience is still about their premium denim, while the Diesel store was humming at the cash register. There was a longer line at the tiny McDonald's stand than many of the local fast food joints every night. Why is that tourists, many of whom probably traveled thousands of miles, prefer the golden arches to prized local fare like overstuffed burritos and quarter pound burgers from Fatburger is beyond me, but whatever. Anyway, it was great to see so many people walking around with multiple bags of merchandise as the economic doom and gloom headlines continue to spew out on a daily basis. Happy Friday!
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