Living where I live (coastal California, a little closer to the Bay than LA) has a ton of perks - beautiful beaches, hikes, and views abound all in my proverbial backyard. But as someone who has been afflicted with a love for well-made clothing, one thing that my area lacks pretty severely is places to go put my hands on that clothing, and talk in-person with others who share the same curse.
So a few weekends ago, for my birthday, I dragged my fiancée down to LA to check out two back-to-back pop ups: Earth\Studies and Colbo. Earth\Studies is one of my favorite new-ish brands out right now; their conceit is GORPy garments that are built with the express purpose of linking the wearer with the natural world around them. Being someone who lives in an environment I’d consider very “natural”, this theme heavily appeals to me, and of course it helps that all the clothes are well-made and visually interesting.
I own a few pairs of their MP-103 “Field pants” and can vouch that they both look good and function incredibly well - I wore one pair on an overnight backpacking trip recently and the roomy legs, small-pockets-inside-bigger-pockets, and self-cinching belt all lent themselves incredibly well to exploration.
For this LA trip, I was itching to get my hands on the new model from their recent Collection 11, the MP-108 “Utility pants” - set apart by an even wider, flowy-er silhouette, and an even BIGGER damn pocket on the left side. I mean the pockets were nothing to scoff at before, but this thing has its own toggle cinch and everything. This is a “you don’t even need to bring a tote to the farmer’s market, there’s plenty of room for your dried fruits and cherry tomatoes right in here” pocket. And when there’s nothing in it, it charmingly bulges out from the side of the pants, but in a tasteful way, not in a “dude, see a doctor for that giant tumor on your leg” way.
I almost grabbed the “Earth White” pair from their site when they released, but I’m glad I held off. For the pop-up (hosted at Hatchet Supply in DTLA), they stocked an upcoming “Basalt” colorway that’s not currently available anywhere yet. Aside from feeling like a special boy for having them, I love that this colorway sits in a pleasant zone somewhere in the middle of black, brown, and gray.
The Earth\Studies team themselves are all extremely kind, personable folks who were making coffee and pouring wine for their customers as they manned the shop. It’s easy to tell that they’re all very intentional with the moves that they make as a brand, and the clothing reflects that.
The next day, we headed up to the Silver Lake/Los Feliz area for the Colbo NYC pop up.
Colbo is a brand that I’m a little less familiar with, since they’re almost exclusively NYC-based. They started as a shop/hangout space, and as I understand it, have been developing their own line for a while now. The pop-up was at KADO, a small Japanese home goods shop right next door to Maru Coffee (which had a line down the block!). The location was a perfect fit - Colbo’s highly dialed-in SS24 basics fit right in with the minimalist homewares and decor items stocked at KADO.
I really enjoyed everything from Colbo’s SS24 collection; beautiful textures seem to be one of the focal points of the fashion industry as a whole right now (which I couldn’t be happier about) and this definitely applied here. The standout pieces for me were the Banaras shirt, a linen button down with a pleasing paper-like yet substantial texture, and the Half-zip parkas, which were made of some of the smoothest nylon I’ve ever interacted with - about as close to liquid as I think fabric can get.
These pieces were out of the budget (since I got my Earth\Studies pants the day before), but I was very glad to be able to appreciate them in person considering the aforementioned drawbacks of the area I call home. And I did grab a tee and a hat (and a large amount of free stickers) to commemorate the visit.
The LA portion of this recap concluded with a stroll around Silver Lake and some stops in other very cool shops, none of which had any specific purpose but several of which had more nice garments I was glad to see IRL.
Fast forward to the next weekend, I found my happy ass driving a few hours in the other direction.
I was headed up to Oakland, where Jonah and Erin of Blackbird Spyplane hosted a lively gathering at the quaint, artsy Snail Bar in Temescal Alley. This trip was less about seeing cool jawns hanging on racks, and more about spending time around the people bringing those jawns to life in their own creative ways.
BBSP is a huge inspiration to me from a style perspective, as well as when it comes to skillfully putting words on a page, so it was great to mingle with the Spyplane copilots for a bit. And the bay definitely showed out for this little shindig - everyone in attendance looked great.
The night closed out with some delicious, spicy pies across the street at Pizzaiolo - glad the waistband on the new pants is elastic.
All in all, it was great to these were two very inspiring back-to-back weekends for someone who enjoys elegant garments and the people who rock them splendiferously.
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