design stores

Jesse and I have found that our Midwestern-sized sofa is not very proportionate in size to our urban LA apartment, and thus have been casually looking for a new, sleeker sofa. (The same is actually true of our dog, but we won't be replacing him - giant, adorable monster that he is.)

The couch-shopping has provided the perfect excuse to check out some of the many, many design-oriented stores in LA. We've often driven through neighborhoods with interesting storefronts, and we've also been seeing a lot of LA-based stores featured on various HGTV shows. So one day we decided to park our car in one of those neighborhoods and wander a bit. And we found some fun stuff! It felt nice to be surrounded by so many interesting and beautiful things in all the stores we stopped by, which was more the main point of the afternoon than actually making a purchase anyway.

A week or two after we randomly stopped in this store, it was featured in Emily Henderson's Secrets from a Stylist. I love recognizing places on TV. :)

This picture was taken in a store that was filled with vintage hardware pieces - drawer pulls, doorknobs, keyholes, and all sorts of little bits from buildings past. If you were renovating a historic home, this place would be an absolute treasure trove. I've never seen so much hardware in one place.

This fabric store kind of made me want to be a designer just to bring my clients here. So pretty.

This place had all vintage Asian furniture. It was a giant place and was a little much altogether, but individually, many of the pieces were beautiful and definitely had a very strong historic feeling.

We've been pretty interested in mid-century modern furniture lately, but we only went to one shop that had that - and it wasn't really the type of place that I felt comfortable taking pictures (I had already gotten reprimanded once in a different store). But with all of the stores around town, I am sure we'll do this again!