Where Playboy Enterprises' Creative Director Buys Furniture

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Los Angeles has more stores than anyone could physically tackle, but somehow we always keep returning to the usual suspects. To break out of the rut, we've asked some local shopping and fashion gurus to provide their hidden retail gems—those unique stores around LA that we might not all know about. Cue the Beatles: We're about to get a little help from our friends.

Image via Yelp

Landis Smithers is the creative director of Playboy Enterprises. He's hands-on with every aspect of the brand, including the website, the products and how consumers view Playboy (just not the magazine). He has an incredible collection of vintage furniture in his LA home and when he wants to expand it, he heads to Galerie Half on Melrose.

Galerie Half is the kind of space that goes beyond the mere 'curation' (the over-used term of the decade) of furniture and art and becomes a literal representation of a life well lived. The store is a stunning mix of antiques of all eras, but without the pretentious filter of name-dropping and bold title in the front window expressions you so often find in LA. Entering the vast gray walled space, with its concrete floors and comfortably arranged tableaus, you can't help imagine this as the type of space a modern playboy would assemble from a mix of inherited family treasures, Clignancourt thrift finds and saved-for-but-never-bragged-about signature priceless items. It is also the kind of collection of art and items that most women swoon over, running their hands over the aged leather of a Mogensen sofa, or lingering at a walnut turn of the century sewing table. One day when I walked through, Cameron, the proprietor, was holding a lop-eared baby hare that he had rescued from the street that morning, stroking it lovingly as we talked about a piece of pottery that had no provenance, but 'lovely lines.' It is that kind of experience that makes Galerie Half a favorite find, but also a store that goes beyond product to actual experience.

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Galerie Half

6911 Melrose Ave Los Angeles, CA 90038