The Last Time I Saw Paris

If there’s any sign that Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are so day-before-yesterday, it’s the news that their favorite shopping playground, Kitson, is closing all its doors.

Trendy store brands have always come and gone. It’s the root definition of “trendy,” after all. Once it becomes the purview of the general public, the “trend quotient” has flown and its fashion kittens have moved on.

For a long while, Kitson in Los Angeles beat the odds. From its inception in 2000 on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, it was known as the boutique for Hollywood’s bright young things in the first decade of the third millennium A.D.

The young starlets were oh-so-compelling, with their demands that the store open in the wee small hours to accommodate them and their entourages. A well-known image is of Hilton’s puppy urinating on some Kitson shoe displays while she and her buds rummaged through the racks.

Oh, you know, just Paris being Paris, circa 2003.

Soon, every glam baby in LA had to come in and kiss the Kitson floors. And then every Elle and E! Online reader from around the country had to make the pilgrimage to Melrose or Robertson or Santa Monica Place or Fashion Island and walk out with a baby blue shopping bag.

But, as any rueful retailer will acknowledge, retailing is about more than a sudden burst of celebrity-hood. It’s hard work: evaluating vendors, keeping merchandise in stock, setting reasonable pricing standards, balancing inventory so that you’re not constantly putting huge “SALE” signs in the windows. (I imagine Lindsay Lohan abhorred huge “SALE” signs and those young copycats who tried to emulate her particular 3 a.m. look for 60 cents on the dollar.)

The chain reached 19 stores at its peak. A cachet can crash when you’re suddenly all over the place in Newport Beach, Malibu and Camarillo.

Most ignominious of all for Kitson was getting bailed out with a loan from the parent company of Spencer Gifts – uncool! That was surely the last time Kitson saw Paris.

The New York Times quoted a music industry shopper who was browsing through the closeouts: “The celebrities who used to crowd this space are absent now. I mean, what does that show? Celebrities are higher up now. They go straight to designers.”

And if you suspect all those young celebs of the long-ago early 21st Century really liked being photographed by the paparazzi, or assaulted by screaming fans, said The Times, “why rely on squirrelly paparazzi to capture your shopping spree when you can do it yourself, with better filters, on Instagram?”

There’s yet another element to trendiness that may say it all about Kitson’s fall from grace. And that is, who really cares anymore where Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears shop? Now everyone wants to know where Taylor Swift, Rihanna and the Jenner girls are shopping.

It won’t be at Kitson.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.