Los Angeles Fashion District
Los Angeles Fashion District
Now known as "The Garment District", this Mecca for shopping is located in downtown Los Angeles and is continually expanding. It currently lists at 82 city blocks of shops, market centers and apparel marts.
Serving both buyers and the general public, the district boasts a huge concentration of fashion-related businesses and a block devoted to every type of fabric imaginable, where bargaining and haggling is the norm.
If you see something you like, traditionally you would try to strike a deal.
It's okay with most merchants to offer less and try to get a deal. There is a good deal of "deal making" at these venues.
There is an interesting area called Santee Alley a densely populated "back alley" shopping path between Maple and Santee Street, stretching from Olympic to Pico. This alley is notorious for being home to a large concentration of bootleggers, trying to sell a variety of faux designer goods, ripped DVDs, and other stolen or bootleg items. There are numerous designer knock-offs and police raids are not uncommon to catch these dealers in stolen and fraudulant property. Despite this, there are many reputable and honest merchants in the alley.
In the past several years, a huge push was made to revitalize this area in 1995 with the development of the Downtown Property Owners Association (DPOA) which launched one of California's first property based business improvement districts (BID) giving the Garment District a new name in the process. There are also strict policing within the garment community of bootleggers and other illegal activities that before had been merely tolerated.
Check out the Fashion District on your next visit to Los Angeles.
