A City That Looks Like No Other : Who needs NAFTA? We’ve long had free trade of style. Cultures converge to produce everything from Guatemalan-inspired surf wear to kente-covered kitchen canisters.

Beyond “tropical-style,” Hawaiian shirts and a sprinkling of Polynesian-themed restaurants boasting bamboo highball glasses and plastic leis, Los Angeles in the ‘50s offered only a tiny, postcard-perfect sampling of the cultural wonders of the world. A trek for the exotic used to be just that--a trek. An ambitious undertaking that would yield--if you were tenacious--exhilarating, praise-worthy results.

For a time, it seemed the only explorers were those traveled “artist” friends who knew how to do “clever” things with hanging batiks or who padded about in hand-painted sandals from Pakistan. The garments and household appointments spoke worlds about the wearer: free and forward-thinkers, citizens of the world.

With the arrival of barn-size, stocked-to-the-rafters chains like Pier 1 Imports (now ubiquitous) and the Akron (long defunct) in the early ‘60s, it became easy to affect the worldliness of the rootless wanderer. These stores ushered in the designs of foreign ports, making the exotic commonplace. Amid the packing straw were exquisite Japanese mats, paper globes, kimono-style robes, incense burners, silk skirts and your Buddha of choice--standing or seated. Newly enlightened shoppers piled histories, originals and mass-produced copies, into their carts--items sure to inspire awe-soaked inquiries.

But nowadays, even an unadventurous mall crawler can stumble onto a slender slice of Africa, Russia, South America or Jamaica. Within four walls, boutiques and eateries attempt to reflect the style and animus of a culture, from the clothing hanging on the racks to the music pulsing through speakers. The influence of converging cultures falls into place in various ways: Your local coffeehouse’s neo-bohemian barista tucks the heft of his blond ponytail beneath a brilliant African kufi hat; the Italian-born maitre d’ shrugs out of a wool blazer to reveal a Guatemalan-style shirt in varying shades of rose and gray.

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Although Los Angeles streets have undergone a tremendous metamorphosis in the last few decades with immigration and the ever-broadening media-maintained global village, a steady glimmer of ethnic style has always held forth here--people pursuing their everyday lives, draping themselves in cultural comforts, mixing the past with the present.

“Of all the major metropolitan cities of the world, L.A. is unique,” says designer Jas Nakaoka of J.T. Nakaoka Associates Architects, who provided the interior restoration for the Japanese American National Museum and designed the new J. Paul Getty Trust Museum store.

“In New York, for example, you have Chinatown, but here you have communities like that all over, where people don’t have to speak English. . . . There are tremendous pockets that we are often oblivious about until (we) have to drive somewhere for something and are shocked that all the signs are in another language.” This would not have been possible if Los Angeles wasn’t so spread out, with clusters of business centers dotting the basin, for example, Nakaoka says.

“People move to different areas because they can find different things. I’ve heard (Iranians) say they like the Westside because the mood and climate are much like Tehran.”

Ethnicity, he says, “is starting to be expressed more and more because people are starting to know themselves, or at least they know what they don’t like.” And for designers, the city is a dream: “You can experience the entire gamut of retail consumer groups in one city.”

As in many major cities, ethnic pockets here are easy enough to find. Mexican and Spanish heritages are particularly visible, not only in street names and architecture, but also in rituals of celebration, when costume, music and other displays of tradition bloom. But these cultural pools often have a cordoned-off feel--relegated to streets, quarters or “towns” (Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street), Disneyland-tidy, brought out of mothballs for annual festivals or tour-bus visits.

After the civil-rights movement eased a long history of restrictive housing covenants, cultures began to spill over those borders, transforming the California Look. Immigrants bring their physical trappings as well as their dreams, fashioning a comfortable home away from home. And the face of the city benefits greatly from a free trade of style. We borrow the inspiration, then craft a new version of our own--be it fast-food chains offering Americanized versions of comida Mexicana or home decorators and fashion stylists looking for a hint of the “unusual” amid flea-market castaways .

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“When they first come in, people don’t think it’s ‘sophisticated enough,’ ” Felicia Semebene says of the clothing and accessories she sells. From her stall, Koalack Medina Baye African Clothing, in the Touch of Africa Plaza Community Shopping Center on Crenshaw Boulevard, she helps tentative Angelenos become comfortable with crossing cultural borders.

The vibrant two-piece butterfly dresses and head wraps are bestsellers, says Semebene, who sometimes has to ease even the adventurous into a new look. “I get a lot of women coming in on Friday or Saturday looking for something for church. They sometimes hesitate over fear of how others will react, whether or not they can also wear the garments to work. But then they get positive reactions, people asking them where they bought them,” she explains.

The trend of late to wear one’s ancestry on one’s sleeve is fueled by a growing freedom of expression and a greater acceptance of what is appropriate in a wide array of settings--from 9-5 to black tie. As rules relax, some people choose to shout their heritage to all those brushing past on the Promenade, while others want to explore the expanse of another. For some, dabbling is a bit daunting, so it might take a special occasion to prompt a fashion adventure, says a clerk at West L.A.’s Kavita’s Sari Palace, which specializes in Indian jewelry and clothing: “About four days before Halloween, lots of American women come in, wanting to buy a sari.”

It’s no coincidence that retailers and designers have been filling their racks and sketch pads with myriad bright colors and styles that conjure a conflation of cultures.

Marie Joyce, a spokeswoman for Nordstrom, says buyers keep a close eye on the ethnic evolution of the city. Shifts in shopping habits and dressing trends become most apparent in the palette, texture and silhouettes of apparel, she explains, noting that spring will bring Nehru collars, sarong skirts, harem-style pants, sheer scarves, belly necklaces, arm and wrist cuffs and large bangles in burnished metals.

“From our South Bay offices to Downtown, there are at least 35 languages spoken,” she says. “But the ethnic influence is felt internationally as well as locally. It’s broader than just our local awareness.”

Although most large retail chains rely on a centralized buying team, Nordstrom buyers often live and work in the community they serve. “They experience it every day,” Joyce says. “There is such a growth of diversity in general, almost a celebration of other cultures, other peoples. (People) are proud of their culture here, and you feel it.”

The L.A.-based catalogue outfit Bila, oft-imitated purveyor of that often ineffable designation “ethnic style,” creates veritable moods out of frothy dresses, transparent billowy blouses and ankle-length skirts that evoke nights in Tunisia--just for starters. Made in Pakistan, the clothes are stocked in boutiques at either end of the city and state, as well as in ports as far as Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe.

“In L.A., the look tends to be more soft, unconstructed dressing,” says Susan Payne, head buyer for Bila. “Here, there is a big acceptance of sheer fabrics as compared to the Midwest. . . . People wear our clothes to work here; you don’t see that everywhere. In my experience, ethnic styles have kind of come and gone. Right now, they seem to be hanging around here a little longer.”

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How we drape ourselves is only a small part of the Southern California mosaic. The city’s facade ceaselessly reconfigures, something a leisurely Sunday drive easily bears out. As Little Tokyo dissolves into Boyle Heights, pagoda-inspired architecture and neon-blaring noodle shops drift into murals of multicultural heroes travailing arm-in-arm. Discotecas spilling Banda and samba onto the sidewalk act as the soundtrack for the scene at a monument-cum-doughnut shop at 1st and Pleasant, where mariachis, in sleek black pants with silver seams, pass the time.

This vast assemblage has changed the way we view our world. Yet we may be so inured that we overlook the altar to Santa Barbara in the corner Cuban cafe or the squat mission spire, complete with crucifix, marooned in a supermarket parking lot. And without a second glance, we motor past the dingbat-style apartment buildings bedecked with Korean characters. With billboards in Chinese and Spanish, and Indian sweet shops offering one-stop cultural enlightenment amid 44-pound bags of Basmati rice, “Who needs virtual reality,” asks a local photographer over a stuffed pepper at Culver City’s India Sweets and Spices, “when you live in L.A.?”

Don’t think the concept of re-creating various ethnic oases is lost on marketers. The makeshift street vendors’ carts, plentiful along the busier stretches of Pico-Union and Echo Park, have turned up in polished, gentrified versions in malls--stocked with everything from Guatemalan worry dolls to retro-watches and monogrammed baseball caps.

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Synthetic dreadlocks, Guatemalan surf wear and kente-covered kitchen canisters suggest the work of culture vultures. And behind every such dilution looms a concern among purists that a cultural icon will be misinterpreted or trivialized.

“If a trend is important to customers, we’ll carry it,” says Rochelle Toas, who buys jewelry, clothes and assorted gift items for Uncle Jer’s, a patchouli-scented Silver Lake boutique. “We sold kente before it happened (as a trend). We sell it now, the cloth from Ghana, handwoven, silk. The real thing. We try to buy the indigenous kinds of items, not copies.”

A saddle from Mexico, carvings from Indonesia, a slingshot from Guatemala, a medicine basket from Brazil adorn the store’s walls and shelves like museum pieces. “We try to have knowledge about the items we sell,” Toas says.

When a trend, such as kente cloth or elegant clutch bags refashioned from swatches of kimonos or Guatemalan fabrics, exhibits staying power, the challenge for some discerning retailers is to retain authenticity. Jason Asch, owner of Diamond Foam and Fabric in the Central City, recognizes the limitations of indigenous products: “You go and buy mud-cloth panels for a big job, they’re too small. Sew them together, it doesn’t look good. So people interpret it, so it can sell,” Asch says as he unfurls new translations of the African cloth. “It’s just like fashion--people are looking for inspiration, it just repeats itself, there’s nothing new.”

Asch has witnessed reinterpretation of everything from Navajo blankets to India’s ikat to French toiles. “People don’t always know what it is or what it means,” says Asch, who sells to interior and set designers as well as to renters seeking to transform Spartan digs into a tropical hideaway. “You’re taking something traditional and skewing it.”

Lena Cole Dennis believes education can help move African textiles to a status beyond static curios. She and Eric G. Maurice, owner of Nu Nubian, plan to tailor history for modern households, tastes and consumption.

“We were trying to figure out a way to incorporate authentic fabric into everyday life,” says Dennis, a partner in the clothing, art and textile boutique. Dennis says her obsession-turned-cottage-industry started early, long before procuring art pieces was deemed fashionable. “People (would) say: ‘One day I’m going to have a room and put all of my black art in it.’ I never understood that,” says Dennis, who has worked pieces into every corner of her home and life. She wants people to realize that they can pick and choose, integrate items into their present, augment their everyday existence.

Her venture with Maurice began with a line of everyday items--diaper, garment, travel and overnight bags made from fabrics from Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast. “We went to the archives to get authentic designs,” Dennis says.

Now, with a storefront on a tony stretch of La Brea Avenue, the business showcases Nu Nubian’s collection of shirts, robes and shorts (and carries African-inspired children’s clothes designed by actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, Maurice’s wife). “We take old fabrics and bring a new feel to (them),” Dennis says. Some textiles enhanced with African symbols echo Chanel-look designs.

But the most resonant benefit of her experience, of the traveling, collecting and selling, is something that is often difficult to put into words: “When you wrap a fabric around you, this treasure, you are authentic,” Dennis says, “and most of all, it’s all about what lightens you.”