Appreciation: How Fred Segal’s retail vision forever changed L.A.

By ADAM TSCHORN

Fred Segal leveraged fashion denim into an influential retail empire that spanned six decades and fundamentally changed the Southern California fashion landscape. Fred Segal was many things. He was a family man, a passionate peacenik, a fashion denim pioneer, a champion of Los Angeles fashion and a visionary landlord who enthusiastically embraced both the shop-in-shop format and the notion of experiential retail long before either of those terms were coined. More than anything, the Chicago-born, L.A.-raised businessman helped shape the look and feel of the retail landscape in Southern California in a way few others have. Along the way, he became a rock-star retailer known far beyond his centers’ iconic ivy-covered walls thanks to celebrity pop-ins (Jennifer Aniston, Britney Spears, Diana Ross and the Beatles, to name just a few) and silver-screen shoutouts in films including “Clueless,” “Legally Blonde” and “Less Than Zero.” Segal died Thursday at 87 from complications from a stroke. By all accounts, what put Segal on the fashion map — before he set about fundamentally redrawing that map — was adding a dash of fashion flair to the humble pair of blue jeans. His eureka moment came in 1960. While working as a sales manager […]

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