A Week In My Life

The lighter parts of living in L.A. and running a business

First off, welcome to La Vie de Clare V.! So happy you’re here.

I will be linking to things I found inspiring, have been wearing, listening to, reading, eating, recipes, and more. To start though, I wanted to just share a bit about my week, how I got dressed, something about my days and something about my nights (jour/soir). This week was unusual in that it was all in L.A. - usually things are a bit more chaotic with travel. I enjoyed this time in my (adopted) hometown.

SUNDAY

Soir: Went to the cookbook launch party for All-Time - a great restaurant in Los Feliz, with my friend Naomi. It was a very cool crowd and the food and drink were lovely. My favorite part was meeting Mitch Glazer and chatting about his time living in NYC in the 70s and 80s. Besides being an accomplished writer/producer, he was a writer on SNL in the 2nd season, so I loved those stories too. I’m a tad obsessed with SNL history. One of my favorite SNL podcasts is Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade. 

MONDAY

I usually get dressed by building an outfit around one article of clothing I am inspired by/feel like wearing that day - it could be a pair of pants, a necklace, socks, whatever. Once I have my inspiration piece, or my pièce de résistance, I build from there.

La pièce de résistance: Baby blue Victoria Beckham cords. I realized later that today was her birthday, I wore them with new pointy, brown satin Prada shoes and my Pot de Miel.

Jour: Drive across town to Beverly Hills with Molly, the president of CV, for a meeting at the Peninsula Hotel. I Uber back to the studio, settle in for the hour’s drive back to Frogtown, and was working on my phone and not paying attention, when 10 minutes later the driver pulls up to a random house and says, “we’re here.” (I’d populated the wrong address and didn’t notice). Now it’ll be an hour and ten minutes ride. Work at office til 6pm.

Soir: Wine tasting party at my neighbor’s house. Mix of musicians and people in the wine industry. A esteemed winemaker from the Rhône Valley in France was there, Yves Gangloff, and we were mostly tasting his wines.

TUESDAY

La pièce de résistance: I’m (back) on my pants hiatus. Well, I wore them yesterday but I really have no desire to wear them, ever. Read Rory Satran’s piece from WSJ, & Alexa Chung’s piece on hot pants in FT. But I wanted to wear a vintage satin bomber that says “Beverly Hills” in script on the back. So I tried it on with a micro denim skirt from MOTHER (sold out) but the proportions weren’t really right.

And these loafers were on my floor in front of my mirror so I put them on. Here’s the vintage Lanvin skirt I ended up wearing.

Dejeuner: At work, Greta and Meaghan make a big, salad (almost) every day for lunch that they share with me. Here’s how they do it:

Lettuce: They start with beautiful greens from farmer’s market or Cookbook Market. It’s some variation of gem lettuces, spinach, endive, butter lettuce, maybe some cabbage, maybe some radicchio. Toast nuts in the toaster oven - usually it’s walnuts or pistachios but they chopped up almonds the other day and it was so tasty. Cheese: usually parmesan or feta, depending on the rest of the bowl. Protein: We’re all big fans of tinned tuna, but we’re also afraid of mercury poisoning, so a soft boiled egg or chicken work as well.  Sometimes we add Castelvetrano olives, sugar snap peas, whatever. Dressing: blend chopped shallots, lemon juice with salt and pepper, then add olive oil. C’est magnifique.

Soir: We watched the new (Gyllenhaal) Roadhouse movie (which is very out of character for me), but I chose it because Kara Swisher on Pivot podcast said the original Roadhouse is her favorite movie AND on Sunday night, I met Kelly Lynch (fellow Minnesotan!), at an event so it felt very full circle. I was appalled they still make movies about that type of stupid, toxic masculinity (bar fighting??). Thumbs down.

WEDNESDAY

La pièce de résistance: It’s tennis lesson day, which means I have to dress for tennis but bring clothes to change into at work. For the lesson I chose a pleated tennis skirt from a random tennis store in France, like this, I wear it with a vintage 24 Heures du Mans tee, and a Hundreds hoodie. Something easy to bring to work is our Striped Suzette shirtdress.

Jour: 8am tennis lesson at Riverside park. I’m excited to get back on the courts after a hiatus. Coincidentally, right after my lesson I had a call with the Financial Times discussing tenniscore and the fun items we have available right now: Fanny Pack, Sweatshirt Vest, Racquet Tote.

We have bi-weekly all-in Zoom meetings here at Clare V. It’s a chance for our employees to get together. The thing I love most is having people, interesting friends or acquaintances, come speak to us about the important work they are doing. This week, we were lucky enough to have my friend Christy Turlington Burns speak to us about the work she does at Every Mother Counts for maternal health around the globe. Over 10 years ago we began working with EMC, and our latest collection with them just launched.

THURSDAY

La pièce de résistance: Still on a pants hiatus, yellow tights were calling my name, and it was a cloudy morning here in LA so thought this would help brighten things up - I added some silver Wales Bonner Adidas sneakers and a vintage light blue men’s button up shirt, from France, a brown blazer from Le Bon Marché and my new favorite Clare V. chocolate colored fringe bag: Cecile!

Jour: Our warehouse is about a mile away from our studio, and I love it when I have an excuse to go visit and see all of our finished goods and the team there. My visit today is to see the current situation - we’re busting at the seams and have to hunt for a bigger warehouse space because we’re outgrowing it…again. 

Soir: Dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood, Bacetti, with my niece Sophie and two former employees who I adore: Alexis and Casey. 

FRIDAY

La pièce de résistance: A Maison Mayle dress (on sale!) was calling my name this morning. I wear it with the same blazer from yesterday and a pair of very old-but-still-kickin (Phoebe Philo) Celine loafers and my Cecile bag!

Jour: Went to our Silverlake store to shoot a little social media content. I love meeting customers while I’m there. This time I met two friends, one in town from Brooklyn and the other a local, both big fans of the brand. It made my day.

Soir: Dinner at our neighbors’ house where we met a very interesting former Sports Illustrated model who is now a political activist.

SATURDAY

La pièce de résistance: Our new grey Maman, Je T’aime sweatshirt. It is so cozy and cute - it was perfect with my vintage running shorts, a new dandelion rattan Midi Sac, and this Byredo lipstick to match the lips on the sweatshirt.