She weaves ‘riveting’ stories about L.A.
The hair was big, the shoulder pads possibly more so and the scent du jour such a gardenia nose-bomb it was the first fragrance to actually be banned from certain restaurants of the day.
That is when my ears definitely perked up — and my own nose took a psychosomatic sniff — when listening to one riveting part, among many, in the all-new podcast “Rodeo Drive.”
The host of this la-di-da audio anthology, Canada’s Bronwyn Cosgrave, was clueing us in to the peculiarities of the quintessential ’80s perfume, Giorgio, which rose out of the groundbreaking boutique Giorgio (designed for the store that started what we know of the iconic L.A. boulevard) and itself became emblematic of the sweet smell of excess: a decade of “Dallas,” “Dynasty” and Robin Leach cooing “champagne wishes and caviar dreams!”
“It was the first perfume to be advertised with a scent-strip in magazines,” Cosgrave told me this week over the phone, reiterating what the fashion savant says in her podcast about the love-it-or-hate-it eau housed in a yellow-and-whitestriped box (though Fred Hayman, the man behind Giorgio, sold the rights to both the fragrance and the Giorgio Beverly Hills brand to Avon in 1987 for a whopping figure: $185 million U.S. or almost $250 million Canadian).
And that episode is just one of the spokes on the fabulous wheel that makes this doc-like series go round. Made up of eight episodes, and digging into a subject in a way that only podcasts do these days, “Rodeo Drive” is on its surface — its happy, palm tree’d surface — a podcast about one thoroughfare in one metropolis, but it is also, simultaneously, a microhistory of urban planning, retail-tainment and luxury itself, all of it riding on the lore of a street, yes, that is synonymous with materialism and desire (see the famous Julia Roberts scene in “Pretty Woman”). Giving its thumbs-up recently to the series, a critic in the Guardian wrote: “Cosgrave, who knows her stuff, keeps everyone and everything in line and on topic.”
And to think, she does it all from her bathroom. A “converted powder room,” as Cosgrave revealed about the makeshift studio she’s created in the upstate New York house she’s spent most of her time in during the pandemic, in the Hudson Valley.
“There is no place in the world quite like Rodeo Drive,” she soothes from that bathroom, opening every ep of the podcast with that signature line.
Made with support from the City of Beverly Hills, the series also underscores the long road Cosgrave herself has traced since growing up in Etobicoke. A one-time editor with British Vogue during her London phase, and a contributor to an array of publications on subjects of style — everywhere from Architectural Digest to Grazia to the Hollywood Reporter — she has written books (notably “Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards,” the first comprehensive fashion history of the Oscars) as well as curated museum shows (“Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style” travelled to London, Toronto, Mexico City and Shanghai, among other cities).
Having known her for years, and forever impressed with her ability to pivot to new modes of storytelling and the depth of her knowledge, I wasn’t surprised to see Cosgrave shifting to the now ubiquitous podcast form. (In addition to this limited series, she has another interview-style podcast, “A Different Tweed,” focusing on different players in fashion.)
Sparked by the research she conducted for her Oscar book, years ago — when she spent much time tracing the symbiosis between clothes, celebrities and the “dream factory” of Los Angeles — her interest, specifically, in the three blocks of Rodeo galloped further because of the man in her life. That inspiration, she tells me, is banked from her travels to L.A. during Oscar season for the better part of the last decade with her partner, John Sloss, the acclaimed movie producer behind such films as “Boyhood” and “Green Book.” It was during the campaigns mounted for those two films that she gained “even more of a perspective about Rodeo’s intricate relationship with Hollywood.”
The essential goal for the podcast? Simple. To “humanize the street.”
So then goes an episode pivoting around dialogue with window-dressers (and how the art form has changed in the age of Instagram). Another features a fascinating interview with restaurateur-slash-renaissance man Michael Chow — of Mr. Chow fame — whose connection to Rodeo Drive lives on in more ways than one.
Likewise: a focus on another early bellwether of the street, Bijan — a clothier that has dressed 36 presidents and heads of state, and innovated many things in retail from the context of Beverly Hills — is particularly interesting.
It was the brainchild of an Iranian-American who became celebrated at a time when tensions were super high due to the Iran Hostage Crisis. Bijan Pakzad, the man, was a pivotal part of what some people call “Tehrangeles,” a portmanteau referring to the role that Persians have long played in the fabric of L.A.
Because the podcast was being shaped during these times of upheaval — the street essentially shuttered like everywhere else because of COVID-19 and then by the Black Lives Matter protests when they took over the famed street — the series does not shy away from those subjects.
In fact, it leans into them, whether it be Cosgrave interviewing Ruth E. Carter (the first African-American to win the Oscar a couple of years back for costume design), or an envoy from Valentino explaining how luxury retailers are adjusting to these times of viral awareness (the short answer is steaming, lots and lots of steaming).
Asked, finally, about how weaving a story via podcast differs from writing, and what recommendations she would give for budding podcasters, Cosgrave said: “It is dialogue, ultimately … you have to tell the story in a way that tweaks the imagination.” “Punchy,” she added. “Punchier.”
Find the Rodeo Drive podcast at rodeodrivebh.com/podcast or on iTunes. Twitter: @shinangovani