Once upon a time, Rodeo Drive was a street like any other in Beverly Hills. That is, until 1961 when Fred Hayman, at the time a manager at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and his business partner, George Grant, opened a shop called Giorgio, at 273 Rodeo Drive. Soon, international jewelry and fashion houses followed suit and the famed Los Angeles shopping avenue evolved into the luxury thoroughfare it is today. With Hayman’s recent passing, a look back at his influence on the Beverly Hills shopping scene reveals a glamorous return to the days when three-martini lunches led to hours inside his shops (first Giorgio, then his eponymously-named boutique with its cursive sign and yellow awning). Natalie Wood, Nancy Reagan, and Elizabeth Taylor were all customers, and Hayman outfitted the space with a bar, a reading room and a pool table for accompanying husbands, boyfriends and the like. Hayman closed the second shop in 1998, but the street filled with towering European and American flagships lives on in tribute to his vision of Beverly Hills, captured most memorably in the 1981 Giorgio scent he created for his first shop with his then-wife, Gail Gardner.

Pictured: Rodeo Drive boutique owner and perfumer Fred Hayman outside his eponymously named Beverly Hills shop in 1993.
Photo by Paul Harris