There’s a new men’s clothing and accessories store on Larchmont in the former Pickett Fences location at 219 N. Larchmont Blvd..The Optimist, which opened on February 12, 2021 as a two-month pop-up, offers a selections of men’s clothing, shoes, accessories and even home objects displayed in a living room setting designed by Jeremiah Brent, who also designed the furniture.
For owner David Fishbein, it’s a delight to open a store front on Larchmont. A resident of Larchmont Village for the past five years, Fishbein described Larchmont as the dream location. He told us he learned about the availability of the former Pickett Fences space from a mutual friend of the owner of the building.
“We have only been open for a week and a half,” said Fishbein. “Everyone has been so welcoming and warm. Larchmont is a such a friendly neighborhood. We are really excited to be here and hope at some point in the future that we can find a permanent home on Larchmont.”
“We want to connect customers to the Italian blazer of their dreams and show them how to style it ten different ways, including with jeans and a t-shirt,” explained Brand Manager Maggie Hund.
The shop grew out of Fishein and his partner Joey Miller’s real estate business. Their company, the Runyon Group, is a new breed of shopping mall developer that creates interesting spaces combining unique shops and restaurants in a way that feels both friendly and super chic. Their signature project is Platform in Culver City, a former car dealership which they opened in 2010. According to Fishbein, the stores attracted over one million visitors a year before the pandemic. Since the pandemic, they have been surprisingly resilient, he explained, in part because so much of the space is open to the outdoors, so the unique mix of specialty stores continues to attract shoppers.
As they set about to find retail tenants for Platform, Fishbein said they saw how the retail world had changed, especially for men’s clothing and accessories. Fishbein said he and his partner thought, “maybe we are crazy but, we think we can create a men’s store building on our retail experience.”  So he took a year off from real estate, traveled the world (alas, at a time when that was possible) and set about creating the store concept stocked with independent brands that would be exclusive to their store and not currently available anywhere else in the US.
They opened their flagship store at Platform in October 2019, and it out-performed everything, including the women’s shops. Shortly, thereafter they followed with a second store, Optimist Beach Club.
As real estate developers, Fishein and Miller know all too well that Los Angeles is full of great neighborhoods, so they decided to start a rotating pop-up program to spend a few months in a neighborhood with an Optimist store tailored to the neighborhood. Larchmont is their first pop-up.
The Optimist offers styling and tailoring services upon request. The flagship and The Optimist Beach Club are located at Platform in Culver City and the Larchmont pop-up is now open daily from 11a.m. to 6 p.m. at 219 Larchmont Boulevard for the next two months.
