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Visiting Mameg in LA feels more like a cultural experience than a shopping journey. You go away with all the pleasure and excitement you may have after you have proven a particularly good art exhibition. Which is appropriate because, after moving last year from its location behind the Margiela shop on the small small Boulevard Santa Monica, it now shares an elegant 1930 building with the Michael Werner Gallery, wrapping about three sides of a smooth shade garden from Australian bottles and showing a sculp. abstract, Boringby the artist for Kirkeby.
That this is a store or a gallery is not immediately visible. Without any sign and two small windows, neat as photo frames, is so measured compared to the glass of luxury brand tiles that populate this corner of Beverly Hills that a regular buyer could easily stroll. But for those who are aware, Mameg, who translates as “bay” in Farsi, is a beloved destination. Designers from global fashion houses and luminaries of the pop industry pop in; Museum directors can stay for a picnic lunch in the garden. When I visit, a record label executive has just finished purchases and, with the time I leave, a senior Castro director is trying in pieces of the new season by Belgian stylist Walter Van Beirendonck.
They come for the highly considered mixing of clothing, accessories, ornaments, books and art objects that the owner Sonia Eram and its team joined. You can see, artistically arranged at a long table of Frank Gehry of the 1980s, a pair of green suede boots, a pile of soft crew of Jil Sander or a handmade hat from Mühlbauer, before your eye is caught in a fantastic monkey necklace. In the rails, pieces from the Japanese design home Cosmic Wonder hang alongside a pair of high waist pants Maison Margiela and a lemon, lemon, wool coat by Belgian Meryll Rogge.
Eram, a quiet Iranian, started business in the late 90s. Her name, Mameg, came from her father, who suggested her when she told her she was selling women’s clothes. For him, the parts they choose to sell and display have nothing to do with the designer or the house. It is about the history within the piece and the way they interact together, “she says. She points to Cristaseya’s beautiful tailoring in Paris as” Crème de la crème “and has a special interest in craft and very generating businesses like Mühlbauer and Swiss designer Daniel Heer.
Open the white closets that line up one side of the store and you will find handmade leather shoes from Italy -based Japanese stylist, Yucca Murase in the boxes that Eram will be undone for you with quiet pleasure. Try in a jacket from Lutz Huelle in a dressing room attached to Paris and studio based in Berlin Bekim, with a photo of the Richard Neutra Vdl house in the silver lake (the curtain is the same cloth that is seen in the image) and you begin to feel like something of installing art itself. Serious collectors can be allowed a brief appearance in the Mameg above archive, a trove of important 20th century fashion by the likes of Martin Margiela, Raf Simons and Victor & Rolf.
There is nothing like that as a year -end sale in Mameg. “We are trying to encourage people to think about the longevity of some,” Eram says. And you can’t buy from the store’s website. “We want people to come in. We want people to know about these manufacturers and the beautiful things they create. How can you explain all this online?” She asks. You can’t. In fact there is nothing for him, but to visit.
