Clothing

MEDIA CITY CENTER — Without the customary fanfare of a ribbon cutting, clothing retailer Loehmann's quietly opened its doors last week. Some shoppers milling around the floor on the store's first official day of business on Wednesday were surprised to see a Loehmann's in Burbank. "I didn't know they had one out here," said Van Nuys resident Angela Lopez, 35. "So I thought I'd pop in and look." Phasing in store operations through a preliminary "soft opening" before the official first day of business gives store employees the time to prepare for regular customer flow, said Ferdinando Forcellati, vice president of advertising for Loehmann's.

Glendale's Mervyns department store was taken over by shoppers of the small variety early Saturday morning. The Burbank Jaycees, an organization for young businesspeople in the city, pooled funds from various charities to provide a $100 shopping spree to 23 children in need from the Burbank Boys & Girls Club, said Tina Schrader, volunteer coordinator for the event. Dubbed Childspree, the event is also a partnership with Mervyns. The store provides a 15% discount to the shoppers on the day. All of the children were assigned volunteer chaperons to escort them through the store while they picked out their items.

While Wasteland debuted mid-summer in Burbank, the secondhand clothing store has been undergoing a soft opening ever since, said store Manager Atom Whitman. “We’re just getting an idea of what the raw foot traffic would be like in the community,” Whitman said. The Burbank store, at 325 N. San Fernando Road, is Wasteland’s fourth location, after stores in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and San Francisco, and sells mostly secondhand clothing from vintage and high-end designers.

Police seek sexual assault suspect Police are looking for a dark-haired man believed to be about 40 years old who they say sexually assaulted a Blue Ice store employee in the Burbank Town Center Mall Tuesday. The suspect allegedly asked a 24-year-old employee of the women’s clothing store to try on a dress and model it for him, Burbank Sgt. Travis Irving said. As she modeled the piece of clothing, the suspect allegedly pulled the strap on the dress in an apparent attempt to see her breasts, he said.

Molly Shore It's that season again, the annual trek to the malls for back-to-school clothing, a time when parents and offspring fight the battle of trendy vs. practical. But this year, all family members can leave the store on speaking terms, and everyone should be happy with the purchases. This is the year of comfort clothing -- fashions combining the traditional with the newest, hottest looks. "Tradition o7 isf7 trendy," said June Rau, fashion director at Nordstrom department store.

Molly Shore Camila Bastidas is busy wrap- ping gifts for Christmas. These gifts, however, are not for her family or friends. Instead, they are for people who might not receive any gifts were it not for the goodwill of Bastidas and other Burbank High School students, teachers and parents. Bastidas, 18, vice president of the school's service club, Helping Other People Eat, gets personal satisfaction from contributing to the well-being of local needy families.

Jackson Bell The story of Professional Fit's inception goes back to the preteen days of Kurt Rieback and Tom Pirruccello, the founders and owners of the customized clothing store for people with special needs. Although buddies since middle school, Rieback and Pirruccello lost touch during and after college. It wasn't until a random meeting on the freeway 15 years ago when Pirruccello, while driving, gave makeshift hand signals and wrote on paper for Rieback to stop at the next offramp.

Ryan Carter The village shopping area will be going urban soon. Urban Outfitters, a retail clothing store that caters to eclectic, young-adult tastes in clothing and home furnishings for men and women, will open Tuesday in the long-vacant former Newberry's building at 330 N. San Fernando Road. The opening of the store is being touted as a boon for the city and its business community because of the draw the hip retailer could provide for the nearby Media City Center mall and AMC Entertainment Village.

It takes the average healthy adult 16 seconds to walk across an intersection, but Burbank police on Wednesday were more interested in how long it takes a driver to stop. Beginning at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, police officers conducted a pedestrian enforcement operation at the intersection of West Magnolia Boulevard and North Parish Place and issued dozens of tickets. Dressed in plain clothes with a non-descript sweatshirt and a beanie, police Det. Paul Orlowski set up a video camera on the southwest corner to document violations as he walked across the street about 100 times over the course of 11/2 hours as vehicles sped by. “It takes about 16 seconds for the average person to walk across the street,” said police Sgt. Kelly Frank after timing Orlowski on his stopwatch.

WEST BURBANK — A Bloomingdale's sales assistant who made children's clothes for her granddaughter in her spare time is now set to see her designs featured at the upscale store where she works. The development is a dramatic reversal of fortunes for Linda Legorreta, 43, who said she didn't know where the next meal was coming from just 18 months ago. It was low point for someone who had owned two women's clothing stores with 16 employees. But her monthly lease exposed her business to a decision to tear down the shopping center.

The philosophy of Carrie Diaz, co-owner of the recently opened Swift Boutique in Burbank, centers on merging new with old to achieve a unique look. ?By pairing new and old, you get a really unique look that?s really flattering for everybody,? she said. ?It just looks really different than from what everyone else is going to wear.? The new boutique, at 3212 W. Magnolia Blvd., is an expansion of Diaz?s original, smaller store, which she has transformed into Swift Shoes and Jewels.

Forget your old acquaintances, as the song goes, and pay them no mind. Or at least that’s what I thought “Auld Lang Syne” meant when I was in the fourth grade. When I announced this opinion on the “should auld acquaintance be forgot” line to the class during a lesson about the song, my teacher straightened me out with a confused look and quickly moved on to the smarter, more musically gifted children in class. The first time, but oddly not the last, that I would be put in my place by a woman playing the autoharp.

AIRPORT DISTRICT — Discount retailer T.J. Maxx opened its doors at the Empire Center over the weekend, filling one of the property’s major vacancies and hoping to capitalize on increased consumer interest in savings during the recession. The store, which offers discounted items from designer brands, filled a 24,400-square-foot space left behind by Shoe Pavilion, although a space formerly occupied by Linens N’ Things remains vacant. The store’s offerings will not only give Burbank shoppers more options, but will be an attractive choice for consumers who have grown conscious of their purchasing habits during the economic downturn, said Mary Hamzoian, Burbank’s economic development manager “It definitely helps fill up one of the vacant spots, but it also is a good price point for the city,” Hamzoian said.

Halloween often means going to parties, balls or masquerades. People dress up in their finest costumes, hoping to outdo one another. Unique Vintage in Burbank, at 2013 W. Magnolia Blvd., is the place to go for those looking to dress in clothing from the 1920s to the ’60s — such as a 1920s-style neon pink and black fringe flapper dress, an authentic vintage white eyelet over pink swing dress, or a 1940s-style queen of Heartz eggplant satin cocktail dress, including quinceañera dresses and bridesmaid dresses.

A collection of ancient artifacts, some believed to be dated as far back as 3,000 years, has emerged after more than 60 years in storage and is on display for the public to see in the Gordon R. Howard Museum. Burbank Historical Society volunteers and husband and wife Les and Elaine Rosenberg have been working more than a year on coordinating the Fairbanks Collection. The items were acquired in the 1920s by Dr. Harold Fairbanks and his wife, Helena Kemp Fairbanks, on their travels to Palestine, Egypt, Greece, China, India and other countries.