“I don’t think there was one square inch of space we didn’t use in our first office,” says Tim Kaeding, co-founder and designer of Mother, the Los Angeles-based denim line he helped launch in 2010. Now, as co-founder Lela Becker (who also serves as president of sales at Mother) notes, the two run a much…

Every season, Ryan Hartman of menswear line Field Scout focuses on a particular global region, and the place influences the textures and colors of the new collection. Coordinates for the geographic region are even stitched into garments in the line that is packaged and shipped inside Hartman’s downtown L.A. studio and warehouse. The backstory is…

Jewelry designer Stacey Lorinczi finds inspiration in fallen seedpods on the sidewalk and piles of seaweed that wash ashore in Pacifica for the eponymous line she manufactures by hand inside her San Francisco studio. But in her mind, the items themselves become abstract objects. “I’m interested in the negative space outside the shape,” she says.…

Bolts of vibrant lace from Lyon were waiting to be shaped into ethereal skirts and tops inside Gregory Parkinson’s sunlit downtown Los Angeles studio as he readied his spring 2014 collection for his fashion week show in New York on Friday, September 6. But something more subtle also demanded attention. The air had the lightest…

Designer Heidi Merrick is launching her fall 2013 ready-to-wear collection with a video shot by Judson Morgan inside her downtown Los Angeles studio. As sunlight streams into Merrick’s workspace, a model dons each shirt, skirt and dress. She twirls, she poses, she buttons a blouse—she wears the clothes. And that’s the main conceit for the…

After an extended journey from San Francisco to Seoul, Shanghai and Hong Kong, jewelry designer Eddie Borgo stopped in Los Angeles before returning to his New York studio. Borgo’s eponymous line launched four years ago—sleek cone bracelets and geometric necklaces are trademarks—and he won a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award in 2011. The designer arrived in…

On a blustery Friday morning near USC, photographer Catherine Opie opens the front gate to her 1908 Craftsman home. “Come on in,” she says. She’s wearing a peaked hat, dress shirt and loose-fitting jeans, eyes framed by thick white glasses. We pass a tangle of succulents and overgrown flowers and walk inside, where Opie’s partner—a…