It’s a hot Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, even hotter on the outskirts where fire season is starting to live up to its name, but inside Ron Robinson’s iconic shop all seems well.
Robinson is in a navy sportcoat and a white shirt, slim jeans and sleek navy trainers, chatting with a customer in the apothecary section of his mini-maze of a store. It’s expanded so much since 1978 that the shop feels more like a cozy, shoppable department store than a boutique.
Like the store, which started out as a men’s retailer, the man is surprisingly busy. Phone calls, meetings, his windows of time are getting whittled down to 20 minutes. But he still holds doors open for shoppers, helps them pick out shirts, says hello to his staff, and “Goodbye” and “Thank you” to everyone who he sees leave. He’s also stopped and greeted by name so often, he seems to scarcely have time to finish a sentence.
You wouldn’t know from watching him work that it’s only a few months from being over. But this pace probably helped him along in his decision to close up his shops (a second location in Santa Monica came just a few years ago)
Robinson is in a navy sportcoat and a white shirt, slim jeans and sleek navy trainers, chatting with a customer in the apothecary section of his mini-maze of a store. It’s expanded so much since 1978 that the shop feels more like a cozy, shoppable department store than a boutique.
Like the store, which started out as a men’s retailer, the man is surprisingly busy. Phone calls, meetings, his windows of time are getting whittled down to 20 minutes. But he still holds doors open for shoppers, helps them pick out shirts, says hello to his staff, and “Goodbye” and “Thank you” to everyone who he sees leave. He’s also stopped and greeted by name so often, he seems to scarcely have time to finish a sentence.
You wouldn’t know from watching him work that it’s only a few months from being over. But this pace probably helped him along in his decision to close up his shops (a second location in Santa Monica came just a few years ago)