Rodeo Drive – The Podcast

The holiday season is in full swing and boutique windows are glittering on Rodeo Drive. So who better to talk to right now than the famed window dresser, Simon Doonan!When he was creative director at Barney’s, Doonan never missed an opportunity for maximal effect with storefront displays that transformed fashion retail into spectacle. Now he is a writer and eminence on all things style-related – and he has released a new book about design at full volume.Maximalism: Bold, Bedazzled, Gold, and Tasseled Interiors, features lavish spaces around the world: from opulent Old World interiors to a Bel Air bedroom with no surface untouched, by Kelly Wearstler, the candy colored Trixie Motel in Palm Springs by Dani Dazey, and Doonan’s own bedazzling New York apartment, designed by his husband Jonathan Adler.Guest host Frances Anderton talks with Doonan on the season-closer of Rodeo Drive - The Podcast about why you can never layer on too much, and how Maximalism is right at home in Los Angeles, dating “from Busby Berkeley to Tiny Naylor's coffee shop,” and on to today’s spectacular concerts by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Harry Styles. “We live in such a visual world that minimal decor doesn't mean anything online or on your phone or on TikTok” says Doonan. “Everything has to be maximal, and LA is at the center of the culture in so many ways.”Doonan recalls an encounter with the larger-than-life Tony Duquette at his home Dawnridge, in Beverly Hills. Duquette, a prolific designer whose resume includes creating costumes and sets for Fred Astaire musicals, and making jewelry for Tom Ford in his eighties, filled his home and garden with antiques, chinoiserie, sunburst sculptures, gold-leafing, tapestries and cleverly upcycled trash. It was, says Doonan, an “unhinged visual extravaganza.”Doonan peppers the conversation with amusing insights. When asked if maximalism, or “maxi,” can ever become too messy, he says he will never judge, having fond memories of a childhood vacation at the blue collar Butlins holiday camp in the UK, which was “drenched in the fabulosity of maximalism.” He adds, “If somebody is happy, and their apartment looks like a good reflection of them, you do you, boo.” As for the ultra-rich who prefer battleship gray T-shirts over lavish displays of affluence, “one of the most hilarious things is when somebody becomes so wealthy that the only way they can find pleasure is to build a concrete bunker on a Swedish Island, and go and hide in it,” says Doonan.Finally, to those who believe minimalism is the path to happiness, he concludes: “I just think maximalism is more life affirming and maximalism doesn't need minimalism…Minimalism relies on maximalism to have something to denounce, whereas maximalism is much too big to fail.”Season 4 of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.Season 4 Credits:Executive Producer and Host: Lyn WinterOn behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy GohariScriptwriter, Editorial Advisor and Guest Host: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Isabelle AlfonsoVisit the website: https://rodeodrive-bh.com/podcast/Join us on Instagram @rodeodrive

Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was the beautiful fashion PR who married the most eligible bachelor in America, John Kennedy Jr. The couple, and Carolyn’s sister Lauren, tragically lost their lives when a plane flown by Kennedy crashed into the ocean in 1999.But Bessette Kennedy had an outsize influence on style and fashion in the 1990s that endures today, and her legacy has been celebrated in a new book, CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, by the British author and fashion creative director Sunita Kumar Nair, with a foreword by Gabriela Hearst, and preface by Edward Enninful, OBE.On Episode 5 of Season 4 of Rodeo Drive - The Podcast, Kumar Nair talks with Lyn Winter about her carefully curated and sumptuously illustrated book, which tracks Bessette Kennedy’s fairytale rise, starting with a job at a Calvin Klein store in a mall where she was, ”plucked by a corporate executive at Calvin Klein, and offered the golden ticket – come to New York.”From there the willowy blonde with a knack for an ultra-chic and minimal “thrown together look,” became a fashion muse herself, in an era when American fashion traded padded shoulders and power suits for the understated elegance and comfort of Klein, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren.Kumar Nair shares anecdotes about the celebrities – Kate Moss, Jennifer Aniston, Sharon Stone – and the great names in fashion and design who worked with Bessette Kennedy, and were inspired by her.  She says the photographer Mario Sorrenti “remembers a time when they were sitting on the floor, talking about what the goals were for the advertising,” and corporate would want to know, “what does Carolyn think?”She also talks about Bessette Kennedy’s powerful sense of self, wearing what pleased her despite societal expectations. When she married into American royalty, she might have taken to “wearing perhaps Dior or Yves Saint Laurent,” as well as the jewelry she inherited from her late mother-in-law Jackie Kennedy, also a fashion icon. “But instead she chose to wear Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demeulemeester, and I think the only piece of jewelry (of Jackie Kennedy’s) that she would wear often was Jackie's Cartier Tank.”Finally, Kumar Nair explains how Bessette Kennedy’s allure endures today, in part because of how she approached life and clothes, with discretion and simplicity. “I think there is just this demand for her because there's a dignity in the way that she lived and I think it's inspiring for people who didn't grow up with her to pick up a book and discover her and her world.”Season 4 of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.Season 4 Credits:Executive Producer and Host: Lyn WinterOn behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy GohariScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Isabelle AlfonsoListen, subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.Visit the website: https://rodeodrive-bh.com/podcast/Join us on Instagram @rodeodrive

Richard Mille pioneered a new era of watchmaking with the 2001 launch of the RM 001 Tourbillon, which set a standard for today's billionaires’ handshake. The Swiss company is also a close family business, with sons Alex and Guillaume involved, and brand direction now helmed by Mille’s daughter Amanda.Amanda Mille sat down with Rodeo Drive - The Podcast to talk about maintaining the image of the world’s most advanced and most expensive watches, through creative partnerships with ambassadors including Michelle Yeoh, Charles Leclerc, Nelly Korda, and Rafael Nadal, who form the company’s extended “family.”Mille tells host Lyn Winter about a journey into her father’s business that began with a move to the Middle East and is full of unexpected moments, like a phone call from Jeremy Strong, Kendall Roy in Succession, about wearing a Richard Mille watch as an expression of his character. He said “we need something a bit more classical in a way, but with a push of modernity,” recalls Mille. She chose to give the detail-obsessed actor an RM 67-01. It was perfect. “Platinum, of course, added the kind of powerness behind Succession and all the stories happening to his character.”She also shares the deep creative relationships with the athletes that sport, literally, Richard Mille watches, helping perfect the product while performing at their best. “When you have someone like Yuliya Levchenko doing high jumping, you need to be sure that the watch doesn't move on the wrist and is still comfortable…Our partners are the only ones that are able to give us the feedback that even a machine will never tell you.”The Mille company is deeply connected with motor-racing, and sponsors Formula One and Le Mans. Amanda Mille shares her love of motorsport and driving, and promises to bring the 100% female, Rallye Des Princesses Richard Mille to California. Finally, she talks about the exclusivity of the company’s watches that involve many years of research and development at the end of which come very few new pieces. The wait can be long and tantalizing for people who order one. “We are not laughing at the fact that people are frustrated at not being able to get the watch. We know how difficult it is. But we also know how difficult these watches are to be made,” says Mille.The Richard Mille Beverly Hills boutique is located on Two Rodeo Drive at 222 N. Rodeo Drive.Season four of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.Season Four Credits:Executive Producer and Host: Lyn WinterOn behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy GohariScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Isabelle Alfonso.Listen, subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.Visit the website: https://rodeodrive-bh.com/podcast/Watch moments from the series on YouTubeJoin us on Instagram @rodeodrive

When the art collector and curator Jim Hedges was growing up in the South, New York was a “bright shining star” to which Interview Magazine was his “gateway drug.” “You know, as a 12 year old little boy in Chattanooga, Tennessee, dreaming about the big city and Studio 54 and the New York City art world…Warhol and his cult of personality, his cult of celebrity, the landscape that he was a part of, were all very, very enticing to me,” Hedges tells host Lyn Winter on Episode 2 of the latest season of Rodeo Drive - The Podcast.Now Hedges is the owner of one of the largest collections of Andy Warhol photographs in the world, and he is the new Curator of the Arts for the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air, where his show Jean Pigozzi - The Photographs: Beverly Hills to Cap d’Antibes, is currently on display until May 31, 2023.Hedges reflects on how a career in investment banking turned into pursuit of another hot commodity: art, especially Warhol’s photography: “For Warhol, it was really the source material for 99% of all the artwork that he ever made. In other words, he would take a picture of Marilyn Monroe… and use that as source material to make the painting… And then I found that this work was actually rather undervalued… and I started to think of it as an investment and ultimately a business.”From Warhol he turned his attention to Jean Pigozzi, another photographer with, “incredible access to celebrity and the movers and shakers. And they both documented these worlds in a very compelling and sort of singular voice.”Now some of Pigozzi’s seductive images, taken in hotspots from Beverly Hills to Cap D’Antibes, are on display, some for the first time, at the Beverly Hills Hotel: a nighttime shot of Muhammad Ali framed perfectly in the window of a limousine; Yves Saint Laurent and his muse Loulou de La Falaise in Paris; Mick Jagger with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the South of France.Not only are the images stunningly glamorous, but so is the classic Hollywood hotel setting, says Hedges. “The experience of going to a white cube kind of art gallery that is austere and unwelcoming is not as great as sitting in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and looking at Johnny Pigozzi’s photos or walking through the gardens of the Hotel Bel-Air…That's a better way to experience art.”Season Four of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.Season Four Credits:Executive Producer and Host: Lyn WinterOn behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy GohariScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Isabelle AlfonsoListen, subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.Visit the website:https://rodeodrive-bh.com/podcast/Watch moments from the series on YouTube Join us on Instagram:@rodeodrive #onlyonrodeodrive #rodeodrivethepodcast

At age 14, a country boy left an abusive home to take a job peeling potatoes in a nearby restaurant. Two decades later he was a legendary chef, restaurateur, and caterer to the stars in Hollywood.Wolfgang Puck shares his extraordinary journey on Rodeo Drive: The Podcast, Season Four, in a conversation with Lyn Winter.Born in a rural village in Austria, Puck set off on his own after middle school and worked his way to the top of fine dining in Provence, Paris and Monte Carlo before arriving in Los Angeles, where he transformed Ma Maison and then launched the game-changing Spago in West Hollywood and then Beverly Hills, followed by Chinois On Main, and now CUT by Wolfgang Puck Restaurant and Lounge at the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel.Along the way, he invented the open kitchen, introduced Asian fusion, elevated farm-to-table produce and became the caterer for the Oscars. Now his empire spans more than 27 restaurants around the globe, cookware, wine and coffee lines, best selling cookbooks and a documentary film. He has a star on Hollywood Boulevard, a character based on him in an animated TV show, and is studying at Harvard.Puck talks about the twists and turns on his path to success, including the challenges of seating the stars in the most popular restaurant in town. He recalls feeding Lionel Ritchie and Jimmy Connors on the staircase, creating smoked salmon pizza for Joan Collins, and sealing the deal to cater the Academy Awards.“I said, ‘I don't tell you how to make the movie, you don't tell me what to cook,’ and that was it. And they said, okay, and they were happy because they didn't have to choose. Before they used to get into fights; one wanted chicken, one wanted fish, one wanted steak, and so forth.”He recollects the violence in his life, first from a terrible stepfather and then in the kitchens of his early days. “It used to be totally, totally crazy in the kitchens, you know. And for what? … But normally, if they mess up something, I just show them how to do it the right way, right. It's easier than yelling at them.”And he expresses the joy of foraging for fresh vegetables, dating back to his childhood with his beloved mother, also a cook. “If you ask me, ‘what do you prefer, going shopping at Neiman Marcus or to the farmers market’? There is no doubt that we'll go to the farmers market. So for me, our cooking is all about the ingredients. If we get the best ingredients and then we don’t mess them up we're going to have good food.”Finally, Puck talks about bringing in the next generation and his son Byron, even though he has no plans to stop working himself, “I get excited about everything…to me, continuing doing what you love to do and when you're passionate about it, that's what life is all about.”Season Four of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.Season Four Credits:Executive Producer and Host: Lyn WinterOn behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kathy GohariScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Isabelle Alfonso.Listen, subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.Visit the website:https://www.rodeodrive-bh.com/podcast/Join us on Instagram:@rodeodrive #onlyonrodeodrive #rodeodrivethepodcast

Rodeo Drive brings out the glamor in people – and their pooches – as leading fashion houses develop lines for pets and the luxury thoroughfare offers the red carpet treatment to canines and their pet parents. One of the dogs who might be seen strutting his stuff on Rodeo Drive is Sebastian The Standard, the show-stopping white Standard Poodle who is a fixture on Instagram and has starred in movies including Beyonce’s “Black is King”. “The poodle has always been, for me, my dream dog,” says Allysa Payne, his pet parent and momager. “I think Sebastian looks like Beverly Hills to me.” Payne talks to host Pari Ehsan about her line of luxury shoes and handbags, keeping Sebastian camera-ready and why leading fashion houses are so eager to reach the pet market. “More and more couples are deciding to have pets instead of children. And so of course, they spoil them like children, buying them high quality, pet fashion,” says Payne.The best place to show the latest and greatest looks is on Rodeo Drive, which will offer photo opportunities for visitors and their pets this summer. Field correspondent Jason E.C. Wright learns more about the BOLD Summer Red Carpet Experience from Rodeo Drive Committee President Kathy Gohari. “We are having multiple, experiential photo moments, where you will be on the red carpet and you will be able to have your picture captured and to take something back home to show people that you were the star on Rodeo Drive for the day.” The red carpet opportunity will take place every afternoon from July 25 to August 21. It goes hand in hand with The Dreamer experience at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, offering hotel guests the opportunity to live life for a day like the stars. Ehsan got a taste of that experience when she had her hair styled by the famed Léa Journo at her salon inside the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel. Journo shares her amazing life story which began in Paris, France, where she was one of ten children and started cutting hair at age fourteen. On being invited to Los Angeles, she became one of the most sought after stylists in Hollywood, counting Kris Jenner, Britney Spears, Jane Fonda and Jennifer Aniston among her stellar client list. Journo says the secret to her success is finding the beauty in all women. “I always say every woman is beautiful. You just need to look at her very well, find her the right color and find her the right hair. Then she's the queen.”Season Three of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of the City of Beverly Hills, The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau, and MCM.Listen to Rodeo Drive – The Podcast and subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcasts.Watch moments from the series here and on YouTube.Check back in regularly for what’s next in the series.Season Three Credits:Executive Producer: Lyn WinterHost: Pari EhsanField Correspondent: Jason E.C. WrightScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Grace Fuh

Fashion used to be separated into womenswear and menswear. Today, it is much more gender fluid. “It's really about a movement of pleasing yourself and being self aware and not you know, hindering who your true self is,” says Vanity Fair Fashion Director Nicole Chapoteau, “And I think clothing is like one of the first ways you can express that.”  Chapoteau joins host Pari Ehsan for a conversation about her approach to the editorial pages of the magazine, and about dressing and expressing identity – in daily life and on a celebrity photoshoot.“It is all about personality with a touch of glam and glitz,” explains Chapoteau, adding that people often believe the actor or musician they see performing is that character in real life. At Vanity Fair, the manual for Hollywood and fashion, “you learn about who they are themselves and not the roles they portray.”Field correspondent Jason E.C. Wright picks up the theme of gender fluidity in fashion on a tour of Two Rodeo Drive with Rodeo Drive Committee President Kathy Gohari. They window-shop at Versace, Shinobi, Porsche Design and Westime.At Shinobi, for example, says Wright, “their whole concept was, ‘what would James Bond wear on his weekend off’? And what would any of the Bond girls wear from his closet? So the footwear that they source and manufacture in Japan, there's a size available for them as well as a blouson or two to borrow from the boys.”Whether the vitrine is displaying watches, jewelry, pants suits or bags, fashion has broken away from boundaries, and is available, say Gohari and Wright, to “she or he or they.”Season Three of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of the City of Beverly Hills, The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau, and MCM.Listen to Rodeo Drive – The Podcast and subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcasts.Watch moments from the series here and on YouTube.Check back in regularly for what’s next in the series.Season Three Credits:Executive Producer: Lyn WinterHost: Pari EhsanField Correspondent: Jason E.C. WrightScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Grace Fuh

The Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance, which takes place annually on Father’s Day, shows that fashion and fine cars are inseparable. And racing drivers like Lindsay Brewer agree.“I race and I enjoy that,” Brewer tells host Pari Ehsan on Rodeo Drive–The Podcast. “But I also can have the full face of makeup and do my hair and look glamorous, because that's what I like to do, too, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”   Brewer, who is racing in Indy Pro 2000 and has a social media following of more than three million, opens up to Ehsan about how to beat the boys on the track, and be a serious driver while maintaining a glamorous brand that is essential for building sponsorship. She also previews her new line of unisex, 80s skiwear-inspired clothing. Meanwhile, Rodeo Drive-The Podcast Field Correspondent Jason E.C. Wright goes deep underground to meet Scot Prescott, owner and founder of Auto Vault Storage, a storage and restoration service for some of the finest cars in the world, which in true Bond style, is buried three stories underneath Rodeo Drive. Prescott tours him round his padded garage filled with rare, fast and exotic cars under covers and recounts his journey from New Hampshire, where he was a kid with a dream. “I used to dream about coming to California. And once I graduated from high school, I drove out here. I arrived here with $70. And I started washing cars. I bought some equipment. I wanted to become the king of car washing.”“Every car has a story,” he adds, like the 1934 Rolls-Royce stored there by a woman whose family has owned the car for generations. “The family assigns people to take care of the car, because this car is a family member. And she has been assigned to take care of this car. She lives in California, so the car lives here.”The Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance was founded in 1993 by the Beverly Hills businessman and Chairman of the Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance Bruce Meyer and friends who wanted to raise funds to restore an iconic Beverly Hills fire truck, so they created a Father’s Day car show on Rodeo Drive. Almost three decades later, it has become an institution, but had to put the brakes on during the pandemic. When the Concours returns, Meyer promises it will be ”without a doubt our best show ever,” featuring “an extraordinary display of Rolls-Royces, supercars, antique cars” along with the famed Fire Truck, which will lead the parade.Season Three of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of the City of Beverly Hills, The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau, and MCM.Listen to Rodeo Drive – The Podcast and subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcasts.Watch moments from the series here and on YouTube.Check back in regularly for what’s next in the series.Season Three Credits:Executive Producer: Lyn WinterHost: Pari EhsanField Correspondent: Jason E.C. WrightScriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances AndertonEditor and Videographer: Hans FjellestadTheme music by Brian BanksProduction Assistant: Grace Fuh