Over dinner in Los Angeles last week, an acquaintance offered that the city’s shopping landscape was a disappointment for women but a mecca for men.

I’m not ready to go there on the first point (I’ve not spent nearly enough time in L.A. to be declarative), but after passing a few days in the city, I’d say she was onto something with the latter argument.

I hadn’t been to L.A. for two years until last week to cover a couple fashion shows. I returned to a city speckled with new or newish stores, many catering to men. At Mohawk General Store, I watched a man on a random Thursday afternoon try on a pair of four-figure shoes from the Row, and at Maxfield (which, OK, isn’t new but has been refreshed), a 20-something guy show off a $5,500 Enfants Riches Déprimés leather jacket to his skeptical friends.

There was something incongruous about sitting through invitation-only fashion shows and watching men buy $2,000 shoes, while the broader conversation in L.A. was focused on homelessness and the lingering effects of the 2025 wildfires. (My trip coincided with the closely watched mayoral election.)

Probably my favorite stop of the week was the Smoking Archive, a compendium of exquisite suits from the ’80s and ’90s that the stylist Nausheen Shah sells out of her Hollywood duplex.