California’s rich catch the frugality bug

Frugality has been spreading along with the recession and it seems the movement has finally caught up to California’s high-end shopping districts. One store owner in Santa Monica, who sells things like US$900 Italian sweaters, tells the L.A. Times, "we’re barely making it here." A tony shopping district in that city is full of ’for lease signs’ and empty stores. Los Angeles’s famous Melrose Avenue also looks like a "no man’s land." And it’s not just storefronts that are hurting. Event planners are losing business and interior designers are now working on single rooms instead of entire houses. There are still plenty of people with money, but, it seems, they are too embarrassed to flaunt it.

Los Angeles Times