Beverly Hills is known for its mansions and compounds–many of which take up entire blocks–its lush green gardens, the bands of gardeners to maintain said gardens and the food trucks required to feed said gardeners. It’s an eco-system that makes LA–at least Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood etc–go around. Can it be that the very stylish and chic Beverly Hills needs a make-over? Does Beverly Hills need a new look?

This week I’m getting my “Greece on” for summer and have started gently walking each day.  So I headed down to the walking track in Beverly Hills when I was approached by a news crew regarding water restrictions, the drought and what I thought about the lush green gardens of Beverly Hills.

Are there “younger generations” coming in stealing its thunder? (Enter Venice Beach for example).

Does it need to look at itself and think, “my look is so pre-drought, what can I do to move my look to be up with the latest drought trend?”

Keeping up with the times

We went through it in Sydney.

We couldn’t water (our gardens) and everything was conserve, conserve, conserve. I agree it took a while for the message to get through—you know how it is? You think, it’s bound to rain soon or we’ll give up water tomorrow; it’s really not that bad OR how can we run out of water … to … we won’t really run out of water will we?

But then it started happening: people started replanting their gardens, stopped watering (fines were issued and news stories were sensationalised thanks to the people who refused to follow the rules). You start turning the tap off in while you’re brushing your teeth, you become aware how long your showers are (and curse your guilt and those damn restrictions), you don’t throw away half-drunk glasses of water (you empty them in a pot plant or in the garden).

And all of a sudden you look around and think, “huh, my look is so outdated”. Peer group pressure rules supreme (not that I’m condoning peer group pressure per se).  Because the Sydney garden landscape started changing.  Gone were the lush green lawns and in their place were succulents and natives–plants that didn’t need constant watering (or very little water) to survive.

But I’m not sure Beverly Hills is ready to reinvent itself quite yet.  I think Beverly Hills thinks it looks pretty damn fine the way it is thank-you very much.  I’m not so sure you can sustain that look though.  You might not run out of Botox anytime soon but we could well run out of water.  Bugger …

Five bits of advice

So, here are my five pieces of advice for Beverly Hills to embrace a new look that’s keeping up with the drought:

1. Book in a therapist. Obviously you’re in a state of denial and that is not a good state to be in. The sooner we face the fact and deal with the problem head on the sooner we can get on with our “normal” lives.
2. Get a stylist darling. It’s imperative you have a cutting-edge stylist that can show it the latest trends and looks and just how modern and edgy it can be.  After all, if you’re going to change your look you want everyone to go “wowsers”.
3. Shop, shop, shop: what’s the number one pastime of 90210 residents apart from Soul Cycle & plastic surgery? Well it’s to shop of course. What better excuse do we need to hit the shops and get our new look on.
4. Flood social media with selfies. Peer group pressure works every time; like any good fashion trend someone has to start it but make that look happen and people will be trying to emulate you (or outdo you). Instagram, tweet & Facebook the new look: get everyone talking about you and you’ll have instant buy-in.
5. Hire a new publicist. He/she needs to pitch your new look to entertainment reporters and news reporters to encourage everyone else to get on board with the new look. Before you know it there’ll be specials, reality TV offers and even a book deal. This new look could really pay off.

So now that you’ve got the new look happening and it’s working for you we have to remember there are—of course—other things we can do to conserve water.

How to conserve some water

To start we could, like, make sure our watering systems don’t go on during those rare moments when it does rain here (I know, you don’t have to do it though we still need those gardeners to be gainfully employed).

Perhaps you could stop washing down concrete areas (yes they still do it over here–shame on you).

And, possibly the hardest of them all, try shortening our showers.

(I would have said drink bottled water fresh from the springs but it seems there’s a separate campaign to ban them—something about landfill?).

But seriously, drought or no drought don’t let your teenage sons convince you he’s conserving water by not taking a shower. Tell him it’s a community service to keep him showered and smelling sweet.

xx It Started in LA xx