Site Visit: Whole Food’s Lifestyle Store, LA

Whole Food’s Lifestyle store was a little more difficult to find than we realized. We found the Whole Food’s on Santa Monica alright – abuzz with yoga-pant wearing yummy moms and buffed actor-waiters who were kindly ignoring us and our big white SUV plumped in the parking lot. We drifted around the store but we just couldn’t find the lifestyle section. Was it on the other floor?

Finally we left the rows of nuts and goodness and assumed that we had the address wrong. LA is such a big city – and driving with your laptop open on your lap can lead to mistakes.

Striding to the rental SUV parked by a strip mall that was glued to the side of the large warehouse like Whole Food’s we noticed a banner held up above one of the units – much like any banner hanging above a retail unit in any strip mall in America (If a country can produce some of the most admirable architectural feats, why can it also mass produce the most uninspired architectural landscape too?)

Anyway, we were just happy the sign read, ‘Lifestyle’.

We decided, in the spirit of eco-consciousness, to assume that Whole Food’s was recycling the strip mall unit to avoid the eco-waste of tearing it down and putting up something more shiny.

Our initial impressions were confounded by our second impressions. In the entrance stood a promotion table – on it sat a mannequin cross legged in yoga pose with crazy hippy-yoga attire and Aztec colored yoga rolls. The crappy mini-TV screen beside the mannequin would probably play a smiling So-Cal Yoga instructor if someone hadn’t thankfully turned it off.

Was this really Whole Food’s? We looked around, it was just a big box with lots of stuff shoved up quickly. We’ve seen better thrift stores we thought. But we went deeper to have a look and what we realized was that the strength of the store was not the layout but the product range.

Whole Food’s Lifestyle holds all the right products in the right place. The range is not extensive but the selection is near-perfect. In the far corner stood a proud American Apparel booth – one we haven’t seen in the AA stores – offering recycled cardboards boxes containing their organic Ts.

The ladies section contained tops and bottoms from inspiring brands such as Loomstate, Stuart & Brown and Edun. The guys section had items too from Loomstate and also Livity and MoreTrees. The shoes were all vegan but could sit beside any Camper pair.

In the other corner we navigated around the water fountains, the eco-paint and the bed display with eco-linens. The household section had our favorite Meyers products. The store also sold CDs, DVDs, magazines, beauty products and baby-grows (from Green Babies). Life other stores, nearly all the items including the store furniture was for sale – price tags even hang from the mirrors in the changing room.

Before we knew it there was a pile of garments on the counter. My god, we were in a frenzy – who cares if the store looked like a half-arsed attempt at retail – look at the clothes! Look at the brands! We had picked stuff up from nearly every section we had visited!

$600 later, we leave the small store with most of our holiday gifts purchased and our conscious 100% intact. All we needed to do now was to slip into some of this cool stuff and get back into the Whole Food’s store to catch some looks.

Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13