Los Angeles, since 1940
Edwards-Lowell keeps a two-story cold vault, a cleaning facility and a workroom under one roof at 3314 Livonia Ave. Your coat is inspected, cleaned, repaired and stored without ever leaving the building.
On Livonia Avenue
None of these are marketing numbers. 1940 is the year Merrill Lowell opened the house, the vault is two floors of our own building, and the retrieval window is what we actually quote at the counter.
1940
Year the house opened
2
Storeys of cold vault, on site
24-48
Hours to get a coat back out
0
Garments sent to a third party
What Merrill Lowell actually did
Edwards-Lowell was founded in 1940 by a man who came at fur from art and music rather than from retail. He worked out how to texture mink into herringbone and houndstooth, patterns that had not been seen in fur before, and he flew to Paris, Milan, New York and Leningrad every year to find the pelts to do it with. This coat is one of them, photographed the way we photograph everything: front, back, same wall.
Everything happens here
Most furriers today are a shopfront with a courier account. The cleaning goes out, the storage goes out, the repairs go to whoever is cheapest that month. We kept the plant. That is the reason the turnaround is short and the reason nobody else touches your coat.
Free
In-person inspection and consultation, before any work is quoted or started.
In house
Cleaning, glazing, repair and storage all happen at this address. Nothing is subcontracted.
Collected
Pickup and delivery across greater Los Angeles on request, if bringing a coat in is awkward.
A two-story vault, in this building
Heat, light, moisture and insects are what actually destroy a fur, and a Los Angeles closet supplies three of the four. Our vault is temperature and humidity controlled, it is inside our own facility, and it is checked daily. No third party handles your coat and nothing is shipped anywhere.
Not water. Not dry cleaning.
Fur is a hide with hair in it, and commercial dry cleaning treats it like cloth. We use methods developed here over decades: inspect, lift the stains, clean the lining separately, put the natural oils back into the skin, then glaze it so the sheen and the softness come back.
A seam caught early is a seam, not a panel
Most of what we replace started as something small. A hook that pulled, a lining that tore at the armhole, an inch of seam that opened and then kept opening. Bring it in once a year, ideally before or after storage, and most of it never becomes structural.
The coat nobody wears, made into the one they do
An inherited full-length becomes a vest or a jacket. Sleeves come up, hoods and belts come off, linings get reversed to the outside. If a piece is genuinely past wearing we will say so, and then we will frame it, trim a new coat with it, or make it into collars, cuffs or a handbag.
Wardrobe departments have been calling here since Dynasty
Full-length coats, cropped jackets, vests, stoles, capes and wraps, men's and women's, vintage through modern designer. Every garment is inspected and cleaned before and after each use. Daily, multi-day and weekly, by appointment so the fit and the selection are done properly.
Golden Russian Sable. Siberian Russian Lynx.
Hand-selected over decades from private collections, estate donations, global auctions and studio garments returned after production. Construction and fur types that are simply not made any more. Each piece cleaned, stored and documented, and most of them one of a kind.
“Your garments never leave our care.”
That sentence is on our own door, and it is the reason the vault, the cleaning facility and the workroom are all in this one building. Nothing is couriered to a subcontractor, nothing waits in a van, and nobody outside this address handles a coat that was left with us.
Who wore them
Golden age Hollywood came to Edwards-Lowell for garments cut to match how they were already being photographed. The rental archive went on to dress the Carringtons through the 1980s run of Dynasty, and it still goes out to productions shooting in Los Angeles.
Renting from the archiveNamed on our own record of the house. We do not publish customer photographs or client details, then or now.
Before you come in
Los Angeles and greater LA
No charge for the inspection, and no obligation after it. If a garment is fine as it is we will say so. Pickup and delivery across greater Los Angeles on request.
3314 Livonia Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90034
