Erewhon’s interiors concentrate on pure, uncooked supplies (a nod to the uncooked, pure choice) and uncovered meals prep kitchens that communicates honesty. “We’ve got nothing to hide,” Mr. Chiprut mentioned. He was impressed by four-star lodges and luxurious clothes outlets, and needed extra-wide aisles to evoke an ethereal, open feeling. And in fact, every location has an outside consuming space, good for loitering with a smoothie, which has turn into a windfall of types throughout the pandemic.
Nick Santiago and Matthew Hwang have been such devoted Erewhon customers that a number of years again they made sweatsuits emblazoned with the shop’s title in block letters — meme as merch. Mr. Santiago and Mr. Hwang, who run the digital advertising and marketing company Pizzaslime collectively, offered them for $300 a pop. Now launched in restricted portions, which frequently promote out, the sweats have been seen on actors like Sophie Turner and Jonah Hill and younger influencers like Kelsey Calemine and Zach Bia.
“It just stemmed from us going to Erewhon every day and being like, I wish they had merchandise,” Mr. Hwang mentioned. “So we made some and posted it and people were like, ‘Yo, I need that.’ So we made it for friends, and then their friends would be like, ‘Damn, I need that.’ It exponentially grew.” Today Erewhon has its personal merch line, albeit small (for now). The first drop featured a $160 hoodie, $150 sweatpants and a $30 face masks.
“It’s the embodiment of what people think L.A. is,” Ms. Najjar mentioned. “I’ve always found L.A. to be rather self-aware and accepting of its absurdity.” Her movies are each satirical and honest, a sly meta-commentary on the consumerists matrix wherein we’re all entangled. “With millennials, my generation, we’re always looking to tie ourselves to external validation and these markers of who we are as a person. Your coffee shop, your supermarket, the neighborhood you live in, they all become these badges: ‘This is me, I’m a West Hollywood, Alfred coffee shop, Erewhon girl.’”
