Perfect Pairing: Kendall Conrad + Montecito Country Mart
Photo Credit: Mike Gardner
Photo Credit: Mike Gardner
Photo Credit: Mike Gardner
Photo Credit: David Cameron
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Christy Schuler
Photo Credit: Drew Altizer Photographer
“There’s a rebirth happening in Montecito,” says Kendall Conrad, the Santa Barbara-based designer of an eponymously-named line of artisanal leather bags and jewelry sold at her Venice and Brentwood boutiques. “My friend Jenni Kayne opened up a shop here, and things are coming alive. Now there’s a renaissance happening,” she adds. Conrad, whose father spent years as a bullfighter in Spain before opening the famed El Matador restaurant in San Francisco, grew up in the Bay Area and Santa Barbara. Now’s she’s opened a pop-up shop at the Montecito Country Mart filled with a number of new handcrafted bags and an 18K-gold-plated-brass jewelry collection named after Socorro, a flamenco dancer who was a character in her father’s 1952 novel, Matador (Houghton Mifflin). The shelves also hold Conrad’s Manolete suede flats, a design she calls “my take on the bullfighter’s slipper without the bow.” The look of the 120-square-foot gallery space is very modern and minimalist. “My husband David [photographer David Cameron] does the interiors, and he likes to surprise me. He does everything and I just walk in and go, ‘Wow,’” she says. The shop will be open through the holidays, and Conrad will keep it stocked with an edited selection of her new introductions and favorites. “It’s my hometown,” she says. “It just seemed like the right time to open a shop here.”
By Elizabeth Varnell
Pictured: Kendall Conrad’s Montecito Country Mart pop-up shop.
Photo by Mike Gardner
