Jeremy Scott’s White Smart
The car was white with black accents and bright red wings—a special limited-edition Smart designed by Jeremy Scott for Mercedes. They threw a premiere party for it at the Jim Henson Studios, which seemed perfect for something so absurd. I went to Los Angeles for one night to see it.
Los Angeles always feels like two places at once. Dirty, with that fake-set quality to it, but also genuinely creative, full of people trying to do something real. The weather was hot and randomly windy, sometimes rainy. The people were surprisingly kind—the actual help-you kind, not the polite performance. Everyone seemed genuinely willing to talk or point you in the right direction if you got lost.
The party was this random assortment. Fashion people, music people, models, kids in streetwear, all mixed together in a way that wouldn’t happen anywhere else. M.I.A. played a short set. Frank Ocean was somewhere in the mix. Jeremy Scott seemed like someone who finds the whole thing amusing rather than serious—sympathetic, a little odd, not taking any of it too hard. Mark from The Cobra Snake was shooting photos constantly, documenting all these different worlds colliding in one room. Champagne and small sandwiches. That LA thing where you’re never sure how all these people ended up in the same space, but while you’re there it feels normal.
The next morning we went to the LA Auto Show. Car companies parking their latest designs, pretty people handing out branded sunglasses and CDs. Then a nice restaurant in Santa Monica, shopping on the main strip, small talk with salespeople, imported coconut milk from Jamaica, Christmas carolers asking for donations in the middle of spring. That crash after the night before is always sudden.
Los Angeles is full of things that never quite materialize—limited editions that stay limited, collaborations that sound better in press releases. The Smart eventually came out in some modified form in 2013, and I have no idea if anyone actually bought one. What stayed with me was the randomness of it. You go for the car, you get M.I.A. and Frank Ocean and a bunch of strangers, and somehow that’s LA in one night. That’s what the city is actually good at.