How to dress runners for success
Long Slow Distance is the brainchild of Clement Taverniti, an haute couture fashion designer who now curates the clothes in his Los Angeles running boutique
What do you want from a running store?
A full range of the best sellers that are available everywhere? Or a uniquely-curated capsule of beautifully-designed performance apparel?
If it’s the latter, the new breed of specialty multi-brand running stores might just be your thing. I’ve written about a couple this year already (Progress in London, and Interval in Edinburgh), but LSD Long Slow Distance is the first in Los Angeles. With its cherry-picked stock of running clothing and accessories that hints more towards avant-garde fashion than what you might consider a traditional running outfit to look like, it stands out among its peers.
Situated in Echo Park, towards the east of the city, LSD sits alongside neighbors like a lauded coffee shop, a cutesy gift shop, a sustainable chocolatier, and an organic cafe on one of the most vibrant strips of retail in the city. It’s both a destination, and subject to glancing looks from the bustling foot traffic – something that’s not that common in L.A.
Los Angeles is a funny place, you see. It’s a city where an eight-lane highway bisects almost every neighborhood. Public transportation exists, but is appropriately hamstrung by both the city and our residents. The result is that walkability is a real estate metric. Everybody has to drive everywhere. You go from your current location to your next destination, with nothing in-between. Every journey has a purpose.
LSD gives that purpose. You go to LSD because you want to try on a pair of District Vision glasses. You go to LSD because they have the new Bandit range in stock, even when it’s (invariably) sold out online. You go to LSD because they’re the only store in the city that stocks Soar Running gear.
The man behind the clothes racks is Clement Taverniti. We spoke on the six-month anniversary of LSD’s grand opening about where the concept came from, and where it’s going.
From haute couture to the new streetwear
All Clement has known in his life is the fashion world. His whole family is in fashion. His father, Jimmy started his own brand in the 1970s, and constantly innovated new fabric processes. His brother and sister also both work in fashion. His mother – an artist in her own right – also worked with his father. What choice did he have?
“I wanted to be a videogame designer, actually,” he laughs.
He followed those designer instincts to fashion school in Paris, where he started designing graphic t-shirts influenced by Japanese streetwear. His love for music led to him organizing parties at top Parisian nightclubs, where the DJs wore his clothes.
He duly went to work for big brands such as Kitsuné (pre Maison), and then Dries Van Noten, where he worked across marketing, press, and organizing events – all the things he’s doing now with LSD – but it still wasn’t enough for him.
“What happened is that I was not really happy working for anyone. I grew up in a family where my father never worked for anyone, just built his own career himself. My mom, the same. I really evolved in the American mindset.”
In his early 20s, Clement started his own brand, STILL GOOD. He was featured in the likes of Hypebeast and Esquire over the lifespan of the label, such was the level of cool he was creating. So why the move from streetwear and high fashion to a bricks-and-mortar running store?
“I hated saying I worked in the fashion industry. It was too superficial. That’s why I went into the streetwear world, because [I had] a technical, geeky approach of garments’ construction. The engineering behind a running t-shirt or jacket… the pattern itself is so complicated, and interesting.”
“When I had my own brand, it wasn’t performance-oriented at all, but it had this technical garment construction that you find in sportswear. The perfect example is a casual chambray shirt with ribbed cuffs added to the sleeve. It combined a sweatshirt with a chambray shirt to make it easy to wear.”
The idea of athleisure is very L.A., but that niche fashion culture that Clement was part of was watered down for the masses. I see similarities in his work at LSD. Even though it’s running rather than the runway, there’s an ever-growing demand for people who want to dress as sharply as their mile splits. Running is the new streetwear, after all.
“It’s fashionable, but it’s also very functional. LSD has this fashion component that is very strong, but the product we have in the store is to actually practice the sport.”
The obsession required to curate
There are hints back there about Clement’s obsessive nature. It’s the kind of personality that demands to be listened to, and he speaks through the items that he holds in his boutique.
It’s the kind of dedication where, in his former life as a sneakerhead, he missed a flight to Hong Kong because he’d won the raffle for a very specific pair of shoes, and had to get across town in Paris to purchase them. He added those Nikes to the other 100 pairs in his closet. He regrets nothing.
Sourcing the correct pieces is exactly what he’s doing with LSD. At this point, his wife, Sarah, who works in the store with him and DJs at events, turning them into Boiler Room-style parties interjects, “That’s his thing. He won’t get anything in that he doesn’t trust.”
Clement talks again about “this fashionable niche of the running world.” The self-awareness that was clear when he laughed at being the only person in the world who would wear his chambray/sweatshirt creation, extends to understanding exactly who will want to shop at LSD.
As a Brit and a Frenchman in Los Angeles, after we finish comparing notes over visas, we get onto the sedentary lifestyle of sitting in cars, and how Angelenos have to exercise much more purposefully to combat that. Just the same as L.A. is famous for both cheeseburgers and grain bowls, L.A. is famous for both sitting in hours of traffic and hiking its mountains.
It’s natural, in a place that famously attracts the most popular people from every small town in America and beyond in search of fame and fortune, that we want to dress well while exploring the great outdoors.
“Everybody wants to look cooler while running. All those brands give you confidence to perform better, to push yourself. I think we attract the fashion consumer who is also really into running.”
The original goal was to create a new running brand, and Clement thought that L.A. was the perfect place for that. The pivot to being a multi-brand store was received well by every brand he spoke to.
The brands stocked at LSD understand that there’s a big new generation of runners coming through that want more from their shopping experience, and were very excited at the prospect of this concept opening in Los Angeles.
Accordingly, the racks are filled with merchandise that’s priced highly when compared to the more generic merchandise found in your big box chain stores. It’s the difference between visiting your local coffee shop versus another caramel macchiato from you-know-where. It’s the difference between a meal at the hip new neighborhood restaurant or another extra value meal. You get what you pay for, and you might be paying to feel good by looking good, with the result of enjoying your run.
A local brand for local people
We know that Clement understands the fabric, he understands the manufacturing costs, he understands the profit margins for both the brands, and for the store. It’s a delicate balancing act, but it’s one that he’s committed to.
With all that knowledge, Clement hopes that sooner, rather than later, he will get back to his roots and make that LSD clothing brand, but for now, he is focused on putting his whole self into building something that is impactful to the local running community. That includes multiple runs each week in a part of the city that doesn’t have its own neighborhood run club, as well as music-and-pizza-fueled one-off events, and organizing a racing team.
It’s what we want from an owner-operated store isn’t it? For the rich fabric of our locales to be further enhanced by an individual bringing something different and positive to the neighborhood.
While that fastidious eye for detail, and desire to work alone might not be for everyone, the highly-edited version of a running store that Clement is putting out into the world is as much for satisfying his own creative urges as it is for the people who frequent his business.
As running culture continues to merge with the mainstream, the fashion-forward, community-oriented approach that LSD takes shows us the bleeding edge of what a running store can be.
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Great piece Raziq