the regeneration of LA street style
7 years since the “linen sack dress and Clare V clutch” look, how has LA style changed?
Upon landing in Burbank, I call an Uber while speedwalking out of the terminal in my velcro Keens. Hyperfocused on getting the hell out of the airport, peripheral vision kicking into overdrive as I swerve away from people staring at their phones. I step outside and my face reflexively scowls in the high-octane sunbeams. It doesn’t feel like I am “in LA” until I’m in a fast Uber, barreling down the 5, watching the herd of long white rectangular semis interspersed throughout us—the boring cars, the flashy cars, every car you could imagine. It’s going to take 34 minutes. I look at Google Maps re-familiarize myself to the ecology of this place: I think of each car as a cell, and the cells are somersaulting and bopping along in the digestive tracts (highways), until it gets shat out of an exit, into the locale of your choice. I get really constipated when I fly.
The driver makes a left on Marathon. I bid farewell to my Magic School Bus.
Sqirl is always the first place I eat as a visitor to LA, because it was the last place I ever ate as a resident of LA. It was my moving day breakfast, so it’s more of a time capsule than a restaurant in the schema of my life. I treat my visit here as a cultural barometer of how much things have changed since I left, how to quantify the gap between 2017 and 2024. How much does a rice bowl cost now? Does the ricotta toast still taste the same? Who even eats here anymore? What are people wearing?
I was 22 […] I wore Glossier stretch concealer religiously, my bedframe was a shitty plywood abomination from Wayfair, and sorrel rice bowls were brunch de rigueur. —excerpt from my obsession with sample sales
I order the quiche with chicken sausage and a limeade.
The combination of the flight stress, the sour limeade and the tinny Chappell Roan song playing from the patio speaker made me feel reflective and kinda morose. My relationship with LA is that I’m not really a tourist, but I’m a tourist of my past self. I see the places I used to frequent with a voyeuristic eye, each mundane spot a landmark in my personal history.
They say that the body undergoes a full cell regeneration every 7 years, making you a wholly “different person.” This month’s visit marked 7 years since the version of LA I lived in. When you routinely visit a city you don’t live in, you don’t experience the gradual micro-shifts—a new stop sign there, a cafe closed here—the time jumps feel more violent. The changes are noticeable.
Here’s how I think LA style has changed in the past 7 years, based on:
niche observations from people-watching and visiting stores/restaurants
pieces of media that I feel best represent the zeitgeist in which they were made
Let’s begin with Ingrid Goes West.
I love this line from the script: Ingrid walks out of the hair salon wearing a linen sack dress and a Clare V. clutch. The plot is peak 2017 LA-white-girl millennial influencer culture: