_{Photo by: Colleen Claes, March 2011}

This photo I took outside of one store (the posh Maison Martin Margiela store in Beverly Hills) represents how I view the whole city, the whole idea of L.A.: sometimes unremarkable, but often dazzling. Just as we began to become bored by the endlessness of two-story strip malls, motels, or apartment complexes that look like motels, we came across this - beckoning us right before we got on the lackluster highway. 

If it had been open, we surely would have been kicked or eyed out of there for our jeans and our lack of money, but all we really cared about was the outside of it anyway.

After many photos and oohs and aahs, just as we began to become slightly bored of this as well and head back to the car, the wind blew through and the entire storefront sparkled like diamonds and swayed like a wheat field. Los Angeles, I thought. I’ve never seen anything like it.