PERKY SKEINS AND FAST CARS: Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, the city of dreams, where palm trees and beautiful people bask in sunshine 365 days a year. With the exception of maybe UGG boots, LA isn't known for its wool culture. It's not a place you'd expect to find knitters in great number.
But in 2011, following on the heels of its successful premiere in New York City, Vogue Knitting LIVE extended its reach to Los Angeles. It was a test of how our grounded, joyful reality would rub up against the forever-young illusion of Southern California. As a Mainer, I welcomed a chance to see the sun one last time in September before winter took hold. That's one among many reasons I and almost 100 other teachers, staffers, and volunteers said yes to the invitation.
Our home for the three days of the show was the crescent-shaped Hyatt Century Plaza hotel. The building is pure 1960s architecture, with balconies running along each floor like ruffles on a flamenco dancer's skirt. It was built, along with the rest of Century City, on 180 acres of former 20th Century Fox Studios back lot. After opening in 1966, the hotel immediately became a hub for Hollywood's glamor set—and it remained that way, give or take, until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Fast-forward to 2008, when new owners tried to put the (by now) tired building out of its misery. Local preservation groups sprang to action, and eventually demolition plans were scrapped and a kinder, gentler renovation got underway.
Just nineteen months after the hotel was rescued, we knitters took over. Our taxis and shuttles had to squeeze by a row of glimmering Ferraris that were parked in front of the hotel for the duration of the weekend. Men in suits swooped down to welcome us. They had earpieces with curly translucent cords tucked under their collars. Occasionally, one of them would mumble into his lapel. Although they were mostly summoning cars from the valet garage, they conjured up images of Secret Service men during presidential visits. Presidents Johnson and Nixon stayed here, and Ronald Reagan was such a frequent guest that the hotel was nicknamed the "Western White House" while he was in office.
But that was long ago. For this brief weekend, knitters would be the guests of honor. It was a difficult dichotomy to grasp at first. The polished-marble, shimmering-glass lobby seemed filled with glamorous women tottering in impossibly high-heeled shoes, their bare legs looking Photoshopped even in broad daylight. They wore no wool, and their bags—barely big enough for lipstick and a cell phone—held no yarn. But glancing deeper into the lobby, I spotted the beginnings of the knitter invasion.
A funny thing happens when more than one knitter gathers in a public place. A solo knitter, presuming she is a woman, quickly fades into the backdrop like a potted palm or a quietly nursing mother. We are a cultural metaphor for invisibility—something Agatha Christie knew quite well when she gave Miss Marple her needles and yarn. What better cloak of invisibility from which to observe the evil-doings of the world? A single knitter is shorthand for "nothing to see here, move on."
But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren't used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator.
Here in our Century Plaza lobby, the flocking had already begun. The hotel's well-oiled social machine of seeing-and-being-seen began to sputter as passersby slowed and did double takes. Here, just steps from Hollywood, were regular people doing something joyfully regular, and none of them gave a damn what the rest of the world thought.
The event was smaller in scale than its East Coast counterpart, with just over fifty classes and lectures. But the roster sparkled with the likes of Meg Swansen, Nicky Epstein, and Sally Melville. Deborah Norville, avid knitter and host of Inside Edition, was on hand for photos and autographs. A "Beginner's Lounge" was staffed by Vickie Howell, then host of the DIY channel's Knitty Gritty. A marketplace brought more than seventy-five vendors, big and small, to town.
I was there to teach my classes about the properties of fiber and yarn construction. At that time, my focus was squarely on wool. Southern California not having a big wool culture, my classes were small. They were held in converted guest rooms, skirted tables replacing beds, with only headboards (permanently affixed to the walls) to remind us of the room's primary function. One class had just three brave, brilliant students. We sat in a tiny room overlooking the bottom of an air shaft, and I gave them the best class of my life.
At lunchtime, the more adventurous among us bypassed the lines at the hotel restaurant, slipping by the gleaming Ferraris to dodge LA traffic and visit the glitzy outdoor mall across the way. Shops opened directly onto terraces with padded sofas and lounge chairs in convenient clusters. Everything was open to the elements. This being September, heaters had already been wheeled out and set to use. No wonder the city comes to a standstill when it rains.
The glassed-in luxury food court was mobbed. I picked a ramen vendor and met up with Lorna's Laces owner Beth Casey and her husband, both of whom hail from Chicago. We sat outside and let ourselves get sunburned, as East Coasters tend to do when in the sudden presence of sun.
Our serenity was gradually interrupted by cleaning staff struggling to keep ahead of the pigeons. Each time a table was vacated, it was a race to see who would descend first. The pigeons always won, wings flapping madly as they scattered fried rice and pizza crusts and bits of wilted lettuce onto the pavement.
Afterward, I slipped into Bloomingdale's and briefly toyed with a wallet that cost more than my entire paycheck for the weekend. Then it was back to my hotel room for a quick nap before more workshops, more demonstrations, more laps around the marketplace. From my balcony, I could see glistening rows of bodies next to the pools below. Over the parking garages and office buildings in front of me was a flat sea of West Los Angeles. Somewhere to my left, barely a mile away, were the rooftops under which Fox Studios made its magic.
Different magazines have different focuses, some technique, others easy beginner projects. Over the years, Vogue Knitting has always put fashion trends first, showcasing knitted works of design icons like Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, and Missoni. Fittingly, on Saturday night after all the workshops had let out, we gathered under a Hollywood-style tent for a gala evening featuring a presentation by Kaffe Fassett followed by a fashion show.
I'd like to tell you how memorable it was, how much I enjoyed Kaffe's talk and how inspired I was by the garments on display, but the truth is that I arrived too late for a seat. I ended up ducking out a side door and joining friends for dinner. One of them, an Emmy-nominated hairstylist for television and film, was working on a popular TV show at the time. She regaled us with tales of what the real Hollywood world is like when the cameras aren't shooting. Somewhere between appetizers and entrees, a soprano appeared out of nowhere and began singing an aria. Our waiter leaned over and whispered, "Don't worry, they do this every week."
The show ended at 4:30 PM on Sunday, and the set was immediately dismantled, as if everyone had been waiting for the bell to announce quitting time. Posters were yanked down, the black velvet dressmaker's dummies stripped of their display handknits. Vendors packed up so quickly, some didn't even bother taping up their boxes or removing their nametags. They stood on the curb, in the shadow of those Ferraris, guarding their boxes while someone else ran to retrieve the cars.
I found a quiet chair in the lounge and pulled out my knitting. Some knitters lingered at other tables, too. We weren't getting quite as many stares now. When my handsome young waiter-slash-aspiring-actor delivered my gin and tonic, he pointed at my knitting. "There was a huge store set up over the weekend," he began, as if I'd missed the whole thing.
"Oh I know," I said. "It just closed. Everyone should be gone soon."
His face fell. "I saw some really cool stuff in there but I had to work my shift." He paused and looked around at another lingering knitter. "Do you think there are any stores around here where I could, like, you know … learn how to do that?"
