Fifty years ago, Fred Hayman, founder of the legendary Beverly Hills boutique and fragrance Giorgio, had a big idea: to transform Rodeo Drive into America's answer to London's New Bond Street, Paris’s Faubourg St-Honoré and Rome's Via Condotti. So he founded a group of retailers and hoteliers devoted to realizing this vision.
Now, the Rodeo Drive Committee celebrates a half-century for the three blocks of luxe, with a year of special events, activations, and toasts to continued growth, as Hermès expands with the largest-ever retail real estate acquisition on the street, LVMH builds a massive flagship store with museum, exhibition and rooftop dining spaces designed by the late Frank Gehry, and leading brands and fashion houses continue to build on the creative retail concepts that originated at Giorgio.
“They had all the ingredients at the time. They had great hotels, they had phenomenal restaurants, they had the beginnings of great retail stores, and they had all the celebrities who were there as well. All of that combined to create what has very quickly become one of the top streets in the world,” Fred Hayman’s son Robert tells Lyn Winter on a special anniversary episode of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast.
Headlining the podcast is one of the latest arrivals on the Drive: the legendary chef Dominique Crenn, creator of Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn, the restaurant within the Dior flagship boutique.
“I had a dream about walking down the street with Mr. Dior, and holding his hand and…asking him, what will be his vision?,” recalls Crenn, owner of Atelier Crenn and Bar Crenn in San Francisco and the only female chef in the United States to attain three Michelin stars.
Crenn explains that she matched haute cuisine to haute couture by doing a lot of research on Dior dresses from the 1950s up to now. “And every dish is a representation of a piece of a dress.”
","author_name":"Rodeo Drive"}