A commotion erupted on a gleaming patch of Los Angeles real estate last week. Outside the Salvatore Ferragamo flagship boutique, Ferruccio Ferragamo – president of the Ferragamo fashion empire – was receiving a brass plaque honouring his late father Salvatore as the eighth inductee to the Walk of Style, the Beverly Hills shrine to people who have contributed to both fashion and entertainment.
As a pumpkin-coloured Lamborghini pulled over to witness the action, a big, blonde Russian émigrée brandishing a steamer-trunk-sized Tod’s handbag, speed-dialled her mobile and barked into it: “Something’s happening on Rodeo Drive!”
The cacophony was music to the ears of the Rodeo Drive committee, a savvy clutch of Beverly Hills retail professionals who, four years ago, conceived the Walk of Style award to reinvigorate the grand shopping avenue.
According to the book, Los Angeles, The City Observed (Hennessey & Ingalls), Rodeo Drive is “one of the ritziest places to shop in the world”. Though rentals are lower than those on similar retail thoroughfares such as the avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris, no shopping zone is grander than palm-lined Rodeo. Beds of pruned white roses separate its heavily trafficked lanes, their pristine petals untainted by the overhanging smog.
Though Prada recently spent $40m on its sprawling, three-storey Rodeo Drive “epicentre”, its anonymous, aluminium façade looks a little dowdy compared with the neighbouring opulent mega-boutiques where gold is the new black and diamonds remain a girl’s best friend. Meanwhile, a controversial plan is under way to replace Rodeo Drive’s grey concrete sidewalks with pathways made of pricey sage green granite. This is despite protests from one eminent local retailer that the fancy tiling resembles “something from a shower stall”.
In spite of the opulence, however, recent competition from lavish retail playgrounds in nearby Las Vegas and even Dubai have threatened the street’s place in the shopping pecking order.
To the rescue came Fred Hayman, the Swiss-born entrepreneur known as Rodeo’s retail “godfather” due to his pioneering work on the avenue. In 1962, Hayman opened the cutting-edge Giorgio boutique, which in the 1970s became a clubhouse meeting point for yesteryear’s screen queens as well as now-girl starlets. A Rolls-Royce served as Giorgio’s delivery van until 1987, when Hayman cashed in, selling his mini-empire along with its signature fragrance to Avon for $165m.
To keep customers flocking to his old stomping ground, Hayman conceived the Walk of Style as Beverly Hills’ riposte to the Walk of Fame – the landmark collection of terrazzo stars embedded with the names of cinematic greats that was established on Hollywood Boulevard in 1958. “Fashion and film have enjoyed a love affair for two decades – the Walk of Style is their marriage,” says Wanda McDaniel, Giorgio Armani’s vice-president of entertainment relations and a member of the Walk of Style committee, whose boss was the first honoree. Other inductees include the designer Tom Ford and photographers Herb Ritts and Mario Testino.
In any case, the Ferragamo event culminated in a celebrity-drenched Walk of Style grand finale with actress Anjelica Huston and rap star Kanye West, who performed a few show-stoppers en plein air. The palm trees looked very pretty, too.
