Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Fashion myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Visiting Mameg in LA feels more like a cultural experience than a shopping trip. You leave with all the satisfaction and excitement you might have after witnessing a particularly good art exhibition. Which is fitting because, having moved last year from its location behind the Margiela store on nearby Little Santa Monica Boulevard, it now shares an elegant 1930s building with Michael Werner Gallery, wrapping around three sides of a quiet courtyard garden shaded by Australian bottle trees and featuring an abstract patinated bronze sculpture, Laokoon, by artist Per Kirkeby.That this is a shop or a gallery is not immediately apparent. With no signage and two small windows, neat as picture frames, it’s so discreet in comparison to the plate-glass flash of the luxury brands that populate this corner of Beverly Hills that a regular shopper could easily walk by. But for those in the know, Mameg, which translates as “breast” in Farsi, is a beloved destination. Designers from global fashion houses and film industry luminaries pop in; museum directors might stay for a picnic lunch in the garden. When I visit, a record label executive has just finished shopping and, by the time I leave, a top casting director is trying on new-season pieces by the Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck.There is no such thing as an end-of-season sale at MamegThey come for the highly considered mix of clothing, accessories, jewellery, books and art objects that owner Sonia Eram and her team put together. You might see, artfully arranged on a long 1980s Frank Gehry table, a pair of forest-green suede Loewe booties, a pile of soft Jil Sander crew necks or a handmade hat by Mühlbauer of Vienna, before your eye catches on a fantastical monkey necklace by the French designer Gabrielle Greiss. On the rails, pieces by the Japanese design house Cosmic Wonder hang alongside a pair of Maison Margiela high-waisted tailored trousers and a lemon-lined, grey check wool coat by the Belgian brand Meryll Rogge. Eram, a quietly spoken Iranian, started the business in the late ’90s. Its name, Mameg, came from her father, who suggested it when she told him she was selling women’s clothes. For her, the pieces they choose to sell and display are “not about the designer or the house. It’s about the story inside the piece and the way the pieces interact together,” she says. She points to the beautiful tailoring of Paris-based Cristaseya as “the crème de la crème” and has a particular interest in artisanal and multigenerational businesses like Mühlbauer and the Swiss designer Daniel Heer.Open the white cupboards that line one side of the store and you’ll find handmade leather shoes by the Italy-based Japanese designer Yucca Murase in boxes that Eram will unwrap for you with hushed delight. Try on a blazer by Lutz Huelle in a dressing room wallpapered by the Paris and Berlin-based studio Bless, with a photograph of the Richard Neutra VDL house in Silver Lake (the curtain is the same Kvadrat fabric seen in the image) and you start to feel like something of an art installation yourself. Serious collectors might be permitted a glimpse into the Mameg archive upstairs, a trove of important late-20th-century fashion by the likes of Martin Margiela, Raf Simons and Viktor & Rolf. There is no such thing as an end-of-season sale at Mameg. “We’re trying to encourage people to think about the longevity of a piece,” 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 makers and the beautiful things that they create. How could you explain all of this online?” she asks. You couldn’t. There’s really nothing for it but to visit.
