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Visiting Mameg in Los Angeles feels more like a cultural experience than as a shopping trip. You leave with all the satisfaction and emotion that I could have after witnessing a particularly good art exhibition. Which is appropriate because, after having moved last year from its location behind the Margiela store in the nearby Little Santa Monica Boulevard, it now shares an elegant building of the 1930 LaokoonBy artist by Kirkeby.
That this is a store or a gallery is not immediately evident. Without signaling and two small windows, ordered as image frames, it is so discreet compared to the plate glass flash of the luxury brands that populate this corner of Beverly Hills that a normal buyer could easily walk. But for those who know, MotherThat translates as “chest” in Farsi, is a loved destination. Designers of the global fashion houses and the luminaires of the film industry appear; The museum directors can stay for a picnic lunch in the garden. When I visit, a record label executive has just finished buying and, by the time I am leaving, a director of Superior Casting is trying the pieces of the new season of the Belgian designer Walter van Beirendonck.
They come for the very considered mix of clothing, accessories, jewels, books and art Objects that the owner Sonia Eram and her team put together. You may see, ingeniously designed in a long table by Frank Gehry in the 1980s, a pair of suede of the forest green suede, a battery of crew necks of Jil Sander or a handmade hat of Mühlbauer de Vienna, before a fantastic monkeys collar is attacked by the designating Frenchman Gabriel Gabriel Gabrielle Greiss. In the rails, the pieces of the Japanese design house Cosmic Wonder hang next to a pair of tailored pants margiela high waist and a gray control coat lined with lemon with lemon of the Belgian brand Meryll Rogge.
Eram, an Iranian in silence, began the business in the late 90s. His name, Mameg, came from his father, who suggested it when he told him he was selling women’s clothes. For her, the pieces that choose to sell and show “are not on the designer or the house. It is about the story inside the piece and the way the pieces interact together,” he says. She points out the beautiful Sastrería de Cristaeya, based in Paris, such as “The Crème de la Cème” and has a particular interest in artisanal and multigenerational companies such as Mühlbauer and Swiss designer Daniel Heer.
Open the white cabinets that are aligned on one side of the store and find handmade leather shoes next to the Japanese designer based in Italy Yucca died in boxes that Eram will develop for you with Hushed Delight. Try a Lutz trail blazer in a costume that bless the study of Paris and Berlin, with a photograph of the Richard Neutra Vdl house in Silver Lake (the curtain is the same Kvadrat fabric that is seen in the image) and you begin to feel something of an art installation yourself. They can allow the serious collectors to the MAMEG from above, a treasure of importance of Martin Margiela, Raf Simons and Viktor & Rolf of the late twentieth century.
There is no season -end sale in Mameg. “We are trying to encourage people to think about the longevity of a piece,” says Eram. And you can’t buy on the store’s website. “We want people to enter. We want people to know about these creators and the beautiful things they believe. How could you explain all this online?” She asks. You couldn’t. There really is nothing to visit.