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Molly Rabuchin left the Elysewalker flagship store in the Pacific Palisades Tuesday morning with her wallet, phone and a box of clothes to leave at a client’s nearby home. A leading sales associate at the luxury fashion store for 18 years, Rabuchin left behind her briefcase and a rack for another client, this one London-bound, hung with a Balenciaga wool-cashmere coat, wide-legged Celine jeans and size 41 Gianvito Rossi boots.
She never returned. As the Palisades fire ripped through the Los Angeles hillsides above the community at 10.30am, Rabuchin’s boss and the store’s owner, Elyse Walker, evacuated the store, a Towne by Elysewalker shop across the street and a third store in nearby Calabasas.
By evening, Walker says, “My son called me and said, ‘Mom, the store is on TV.’” On television, she watched her flagship store, first opened in 1999 and later expanded to several storefronts, burn to the ground. “It looked like the store was poured with gasoline,” she says.
It’s too soon to know how much has been lost in the series of wildfires raging across LA this week, which have killed at least 10, displaced thousands and levelled more than 2,000 structures. The fires have encroached on residential neighbourhoods and commercial developments across the city in a way that locals — who are largely used to brush fires in the hills and the canyons — say is unprecedented. The fires, fuelled by months of drought and the powerful Santa Ana winds, reaching up to 100-mile-per-hour gusts, remain uncontained as of Thursday evening. It’s considered the most destructive fire in LA history.
Many of Entire Studios’s staff had to leave danger zones, including co-founder Dylan Richards Diaz. “As our house was in an evacuation area, my family and our dogs moved into our studio in Downtown LA,” he says. “I took the opportunity to order blow-up mattresses in bulk so that if there were ever another emergency like this, our studio space could serve as a refuge for staff, their families and friends.”
Pacific Palisades was one of the first communities to be hit and has suffered some of the worst damage. Churches, schools, businesses and homes are lost. People abandoned their cars near Walker’s store, running away on foot due to jammed traffic on the narrow hilly streets. Nearby, other stores, including Mother Denim and an upcoming La DoubleJ flagship — set to open in six weeks — also burned to the ground. Palisades Village, the upscale shopping mall owned by Rick Caruso that’s home to brands including Anine Bing, Brunello Cucinelli, Favorite Daughter, Saint Laurent and more, was damaged but remained standing.
“I think, first, of all the people who just lost their homes, because obviously that is the most devastating thing,” says La DoubleJ founder JJ Martin, who is based in Milan. Martin grew up in the Palisades, and her childhood home was lost in the wildfires. But when her mind turns to the store, which had been two years in the making and under construction for nine months, Martin says the team is crushed. “We’re heartbroken and devastated and flatlined.” No inventory or furnishings had yet been installed, and Martin says she intends to find a new LA location. “Maybe further east.”
For Walker, the fires may have wiped out half of her businesses. Fortunately, though, she is among a handful of independent luxury retailers who have expanded their stores around the country. She has new shops in New York City, a long-time store in Newport Beach, an online business and a Culver City distribution centre.
Walker says she spent Wednesday grieving on her sofa. Twenty-five years ago, she was one of the first — if not the first — retailers to recognise the potential in the sleepy-but-wealthy hillside community of Pacific Palisades north of Santa Monica. She brought luxury fashions, and more followed. Eventually, The Row, Bottega Veneta and other luxury brands opened spaces nearby. Walker’s store expanded and became something of a community hub, with large sofas on which kids and husbands communed while women shopped, often in groups.
“I’ve dressed women for their sons’ funerals. I’ve dressed women for their divorces,” Walker says, weeping on a video call. “That store was way more than just clothes.”
Rabuchin also choked up on Thursday. She fielded questions from clients who have become friends. Several had lost their own homes. Others offered her a place to stay.
“You build these relationships with people,” she says, then pauses, her mind wondering how she will continue working. Will she be able to pull items from Elysewalker stores in New York or Newport Beach? Would they have the right sizes for her clients? “I never saw this happening,” Rabuchin says. “It’s so unknown. Eighteen years of doing the same thing.”
Throughout Los Angeles, local brands are looking for ways to help their communities. Madhappy is donating clothes to those who have lost their homes and organisations in need. Set Active is accepting clothing donations from brands and the general public to distribute to those in need (it’s also donated over 1,000 of its own products). Entire Studios is driving supplies to the Pasadena Shelter Convention. Lifestyle brand Flamingo Estate has cancelled its fresh produce, fruit and flower deliveries (which will be refunded) and is donating all produce and food to those in need. LA-based Australian brand Hope and May is partnering with fellow Aussie labels to put together clothing donations. Rebecca Minkoff sent an email blast to subscribers raising funds for the LA Fire Department. And clothing rental company Nuuly has auto-paused all LA-based memberships.
It was an employee’s story of a friend whose house had burned down that drove Set founder and CEO Lindsey Carter to action. The brand manufactures in Los Angeles. “I have a platform. Set has a platform. My network is so large,” she says. Plus, about a quarter of Set’s consumer base are LA residents, she adds. So Carter delegated her operations team and transformed Set’s Beverly Hills HQ into a donation centre. She took to social media to request donations, and the brand offerings came rolling in.
“There’s a big difference between people just reaching out saying, ‘How can I help?’ versus actionably doing something to help,” Carter says. “I don’t know if I would have it in me to ask for help, but I would appreciate the people who would step up and help without me asking.”
“When tragedy strikes, Americans mobilise. There’s so much support,” says Martin. “We’ll be figuring out how we can support as well.”
The fallout remains to be seen for LA’s manufacturing industry. Set’s partner factories are in Downtown LA, which has remained shielded from the fires, but Carter hasn’t yet communicated with factory workers. “There are going to be so many displaced families that I don’t know what it’s going to look like — if our factory employees are impacted, or have relatives [who are] impacted — there’s such a chain reaction,” she says. “You just have to take it day by day.”
For Walker and her team, the disaster is reminiscent of another recent world-altering event. During the worst of the pandemic, Rabuchin had pivoted to Instagram, posting outfits that she pieced together on the floor. (“I was always like, get those clothes off the floor!” Walker said later, laughing.) She gained clients as far away as Florida and Europe. “But I had a store to pull from,” Rabuchin says. Now, she’s living in a hotel with her parents and her young son, with no store left.
Her voice caught. “Oh, I just remembered another [delivery] I was supposed to drop off” to a client on Tuesday, she says. Sweaters from The Row and Khaite. “I remember what they were — I can get them from another store.”
Rabuchin was back at work. The fires were still burning in the hills.
Walker, too, is working. “That was a $30 million door on a little side street and just 6,000 square feet,” Walker said of her Palisades store. “I’m still grieving. It’s still smouldering. Right now, I’m going to rebuild my team that is hurting.”
She’d woken up on Thursday with ideas. “Rebuild? Yes, of course. What else can we do?”
For readers looking to help those who have suffered from the fires, consider donating to the Community Foundation Wildlife Recovery Fund, California Fire Foundation, Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation or the World Central Kitchen. For more donation and volunteer opportunities, see this list of resources compiled by Mutual Aid LA, which the organisation is updating regularly.
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