Home for the Holidays: Fa-La-La-La-La, La Lower Village
A wintry evening and you are momentarily alone. Your friends will be by soon to collect you. You’re all headed to starry Coast Village Road, where your lovely gang will walk, arms linked, straight into the welcoming embrace of the lamplit Lower Village. For now, though, you’re lost in reflection. December. Another year! Cupping your hands around a warm mug and leaning against the mantelpiece, the dancing flames lull you into a reverie of contentment. Luxuriating in the fragrant crackling of hickory and maple, you take a sip of mulled wine. The decorative little cinnamon stick pokes you in the peeper, aromatic spices coating your eyeball with sudden, agonizing fire. In an instant you are a pain-maddened marionette. Your friends arrive amid shared, musical laughter – and are silenced at the sight of you through the window, waving your arms and lurching about the room with your mouth open. A half hour later you are all gamboling down Coast Village Road, laughing and singing, your right eye as hideously swollen as that of a prizefighter. What’s not to love? And what will you find in this cozy Lower Village lovefest? Here are some educated guesses.
Aquarius Cocktail — Lissa Zwahlen Thoeny grew up in Texas and Colorado, spent some time at the storied Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in NYC, gigged at Quicksilver (where she helped create the iconic Roxy brand), and was VP at Mossimo, eventually gathering her chops and CV – heading to SoCal to seek the freedom that would allow her to wield the genuine knockout simplicity that animates her designs. Hence AqC – a mélange of resurrected vintage, supple murmuring tees, and a host of mellow stealth accoutrements. Skip lithely up the stairs at 1151 #2 Coast Village Road and you will likely find Lissa in her lair; a functional, color-filled grotto where washed silks and elemental coastal couture combine to produce the unbuttoned west coast as wardrobe. Zwahlen Thoeny has been through the art-and-commerce fashion ringer. At this time she is distilling all that experiential whirlwind into elemental, elevated casualwear you want on your person. Her CVR walkup augments her shop in downtown L.A.
Though at a glance it looks like a tastefully glittering brick and mortar jewelry destination, Silverhorn Jewelers is in fact more like a genteel foundry. No, not the sort of foundry where molten metals are poured in their thousands of gallons from enormous fiery ladles amid a rain of sparks. Walk into Silverhorn and you’ll be in the momentarily calming presence of brilliant stones and metals that once abided in the Earth but have now, though the alchemy of deep expertise and … love? … been made whole – as stunningly unique, deliriously gorgeous jewelry alive with light and energy. Pan left and you’ll see something just as wondrous. Silverhorn Jewelers is a working design studio. Behind a glass partition, head designer Noel Bendle and goldsmith/stone setter Darby Farmer are hunched like microsurgeons over cluttered workbenches that speak to the unfettered human craftsmanship that once defined the dear artisanal world of making. You needn’t wonder how Silverhorn achieves its heart-seizing effects. Peek through the glass. These people create jewelry. Carole and Michael Ridding launched their enterprise in 1976 Colorado, decamping to Montecito in 1986. Today their award-winning designers and goldsmiths attract an international clientele. And you.
Daniel Gibbings came to his exquisite craft in rather a roundabout way – a hodgepodge of experiential exploration, the courage of youth, an inborn love of jewelry design, and a finalizing leap across “the pond” that separates the beautifully settled Old World from the inspiringly open-ended new one. Link bracelets, gossamer-like gold lattice, hewn rings whose gemstones blaze with subterranean heat – Gibbings fashions the mineral spirit of the home planet into indescribable, wearable wonder. Working exclusively with stones verifiably not mined in nefarious conflict zones, favoring pure silver and 22 karat gold – Daniel shapes heirloom-quality art, each and every hand-formed Gibbings piece the only one in the world. If you’re into that kind of thing.
If looking for the kind of antique and estate jewelry that can become a family heirloom, then Belrose Estate Jewelers has you covered with its range of transparent, sustainable, and timeless bejeweled artworks woven with gems, exotic metals and historic elegance. If you feel at home in their company, it’s likely because of the family service one would expect from a second and third generation father-daughter team, Joe and Sarena Schweke. Although in business since 1967, Belrose Estate Jewelers will be coming to 1268 Coast Village Road in mid-December – you heard it here first!
Since 2002, Maison K has been accruing the international vibe one can’t help but feel on entering the place. A lifestyle store with the outsized reputation 22 years of loving curation brings, Maison K is the magnetic, lifelong passion project of Kimberly Hayes – who sees the world principally as a delicious open-air bazaar and her Coast Village fortress of plenitude a microcosm of global village dynamism. Maison K… what to make of it? How about “whatever your dreams timidly request?” Furnishings, jewelry, unique home décor – if you’ve ever wondered where a black cotton poet blouse and Astier De Villatte Adelaide pitcher might cohabit, wonder no more. Stop in and just try to describe the experience. Better yet, do the mesmerizing Maison K meander and travel the far-flung byways you’ve only imagined. World traveler and tireless enthusiast Kimberly Hayes has only deepened her curative intuitions over these 22 years, making her your globe-hopping personal shopper. Many strenuously eclectic places flatter themselves with the adjective “uncategorizable.” The wonderfully startling Maison K should be pictured next to the word in the dictionary.
Having planted their Coast Village flag in distant 1984, it’s tempting to call Peregrine Galleries a stalwart, but that summons an image – staid, reliable, staunch – that scarcely describes the deliciously kaleidoscopic Peregrine, and neither the living art piece that is owner Marlene Vitanza. When she and her dear pal, the late Jim, moved all the way out here from New Jersey in ‘71, they had a sort of open floor plan for their shared life of art and adventurism. Their having found each other already struck the whimsical couple as blue-chip kismet. On arrival in the Golden State, they soon followed their hearts, opening a gallery in SB, and nine years later the current Peregrine Galleries on Coast Village Rd. What does Peregrine offer, besides a spirit-lifting reminder that there are still Marlene Vitanzas in this increasingly monochrome world? Well, to quote Peregrine themselves: “Vintage Jewelry and California Plein Air Paintings. Chanel, Miriam Haskell, Taxco Silver (Spratling, Antonio, Matilda, Hector Aguilar, Los Castillos), Weiss, Eisenberg, Jensen, Don Lucas, Hermès, Native American, Turquoise, Renoir/Matisse and Bakelite.” As if that answers the question. I supposed just saying “Chanel and Bakelite” would suffice. Peregrine’s inimitable range of offerings is completely the proprietor’s doing. She loves things, acquires them, and takes joy in your discovering her discovery. You know what Marlene says: “Vintage doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be Fabulous.” The move from Jersey seems to be going well.
One might describe jewelry fabulist Gorjana as emblematic of the American Dream – having begun as an exciting leap of faith on the floor of a young couple’s Laguna Beach apartment in 2004. In 2007, Gorjana and Jason Reidel managed to ease themselves into a tiny studio/fulfillment center in Laguna Canyon, and it would be far flung 2016 before the couple had the means to open their first shop. One can just imagine the excitement; which seems to have been nationally contagious. At this writing the Gorjana site’s store locator has a Browse by Region tool for finding which of their 50 shops is within biking distance of your U.S. abode. But Gorjana and Jason have always had a soft spot for Montecito, and in 2021 made their dream move to our enchanted village. Relaxed, subtly compelling, “everyday jewelry” is their forte, glowing bijouterie designed to be mixed, mingled, and stacked. Catering to devoted acolytes of both fine and fashion jewelry, Gorjana has the stones, metals, alluring designs, and range of price points to delight the array of seekers and fans who have turned a Laguna Beach apartment floor into a sunstruck, California-infused empire. Do stop in and support these plucky kids.
Homer Montecito in the Lower Village may be just the most recent chapter in one man’s saga, and that is our good fortune. When a college student in Arkansas named Terry Pillow took a job to work his way through school, the Fates paused their hand of poker and gave the sitch their full attention. Pillow’s college gig was at Browning and White, a men’s clothing store in Conway, Arkansas. Working the sales floor at a time the Leisure Suit was in the ascendant, Pillow – possibly tormented by the very idea of polyester – found himself drawn inexorably to seersucker, houndstooth, and the whole boundless universe of fine attire. Whatever bug bit him at Browning and White, let the record show that from there Terry Pillow climbed into the upper reaches of fashion like a caffeinated Spiderman©: Neiman-Marcus, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Coach. In 2016 the CEO of Tommy Bahama, our Terry, retired. The man knew what he wanted, and in short order so did we. Homer Montecito trades in functional, handmade leather goods with sensory seduction. Deeply traditional leathercraft marries a modern design aesthetic to produce elegant leather goods available nowhere else. These one-of-a-kind fine leather goods are that increasingly rare phenom – functional objects of rare beauty and feel that you need only purchase once for a lifetime of distinct, and increasing, pleasure. Unlike that fancy fridge you bought last year, a Homer becomes more and more you with the passing years. Let’s see your Subzero 48” PRO Refrigerator/Freezer do that.
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