Opened Feb. 10 on York Boulevard, the glassy outer wall of the Highland Park boutique for fashion label Shades of Grey opens to a selection of ready-to-wear pants, shirts, sweaters and jackets. According to brand creator Micah Cohen, he has been interested in clothes since at least the age of 5 but decided to enter the fashion business while studying at Pitzer College.
“I studied film there, and probably about halfway through, I was like ‘You know what, I don’t want to do that, I want to go into fashion,’” Micah Cohen said.
After graduating with a film degree, Micah Cohen said he attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) to enter the business. After attending FIDM, Micah Cohen said he worked as a freelance designer for various clothing companies, including for a white-label manufacturer whose plant he visited in China.
“I met a young production manager, and she was like ‘I’m going to be leaving the company soon to start a factory in my hometown, if you want to start your own line or have anything to make, let me know,’” Cohen said. “About six months to a year later, I was like ‘Hey, I want to start my own clothing line!’”
According to Micah Cohen, he started Shades of Grey in 2009 to fill a niche in the market he thought was missing.
“That is a somewhat progressive type of product at a more approachable price point, at a certain quality level, where you’re going to get a little bit better quality than the mass-produced mall stuff, but it’s going to be at a better price point than the real designer labels,” Micah Cohen said.
Micah Cohen’s wife, Jenny Cohen, said she designed the women’s collections for Shades of Grey before it went on a temporary hiatus. After attending Syracuse University and the London College of Fashion, Jenny Cohen said she primarily worked for large denim brands such as Rock & Republic and PAIGE, where, according to her, she designed complementary pieces to denim garments.
“I designed leather jackets, silk blouses, all of the things that go with jeans,” Jenny Cohen said.
Jenny Cohen said she started designing for Shades of Grey after leaving her job at PAIGE.
“It was 2014–2015 that [Micah Cohen] said ‘I think the brand is doing really well, and we should start expanding into other categories,’” Jenny Cohen said. “It made sense [to] do it. We weren’t married yet, but we knew that was where we were headed, and so I happily jumped ship from the company I was at.”
Jenny Cohen said that when she was designing the women’s line for the company, she focused on attempting to cater to the line’s current customers.
“What would the existing customer from the original men’s collection wear when dresses and jumpsuits and other categories were added in?” Jenny Cohen said.
According to Jenny Cohen, one of the benefits of designing for the line was that both her and Micah Cohen design clothes in a similar manner, as well as the investment that they have in the line.
“It made it much more fun than any job I had previously at large corporate companies where I didn’t have as much of an attachment to the identity or the brand’s success until I was at Shades of Grey,” Jenny Cohen said.
Brooke Ramler, who manages the label’s store Highland Park, said she joined the company in Oct. 2022 after leaving a job at Nordstrom.
“I had a recruiter reach out to me on LinkedIn, and they said ‘Hey, we’re hiring for this job, it’s a boutique in Downtown,’” Ramler said.
According to Ramler, the label’s stores in both Highland Park and Downtown LA are generally much busier on weekends than weekdays.
“All the shops [in Downtown] close at like 6, so it’s not like there’s a lot of nightlife there,” Ramler said. “Saturdays, everybody’s walking around, and then Sunday they have the Smorgasburg, so that brings a lot of families and they end up shopping.”
Ramler said that the primary customer base for Shades of Grey is people between 20 and 40-years old, but occasionally, college students purchase clothing from the label.
“This one guy pops up in my mind, he was going to USC, and he was like ‘Oh, this is perfect, I’m about to get a job, I need to get some business attire,’” Ramler said.
According to Micah Cohen, garments that the label produces flow out of a meticulous research process.
“I look at so many different sources of material, whether it’s street fashion, high-end designer stuff or more traditional [sources],” Micah Cohen said.
Micah Cohen said that while he is not against fast fashion per se, he believes people interested in fashion should be thoughtful about what they consume, rather than chasing trends.
“It does really make sense to invest in stuff that you will have for a very long time,” Micah Cohen said. “Not just from a product standpoint, but also to develop a personal taste and style.”
Contact Avinash Iyer at iyera@oxy.edu
