If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what famous people add to their carts. Not the JAR brooch and Louis XV chair but the hair spray and the electric toothbrush. We asked celebrity stylist Law Roach, who recently curated a holiday collection with CB2, about the Ruffles chips he eats with caviar, the sweatpants his family buys him for the holidays, and the platform boots he wears to run errands.
For a long time, vodka was my drink of choice. With age also comes wisdom. Me just throwing back shots and stuff I did in my 20s is no longer the person I am. I started sampling different tequilas over the last couple of years, and what I found about Casamigos is that I like to sip it. I like to have it with a couple of cubes of ice just to put a slight chill on it. The Reposado suits me well. I don’t need a full big drink. I can have one or two of those for the whole night, and I’m great, I’m social. Not like the younger me when I needed eight vodka cranberries to feel like I’m a part of the party. So again, with age, I think it’s important for you to know what your thing is. Your drink preferences and what you like to eat are kind of like your style to me. It all plays with each other.
So great story. I wasn’t a caviar person. I happened to go to dinner with a client and some of her friends, and they were all eating caviar. At this part of my life and my career, I hadn’t really been exposed to a lot of things like that. And so, I was just like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m okay. I don’t like caviar.” They’re like, “What do you mean, you don’t like caviar?” I was kind of bullied into trying it again, and the way it was given to me made me really love it. It was just on a toast point, with a little butter and crème fraîche, and I was like, “This is delicious. This is divine.” After that, I started making my own version. I prefer it on toast points rather than blinis, and I didn’t have either. I was playing around in the kitchen — and this was long before the TikTok girl who was eating caviar with things like Doritos — and I happened to have some sour-cream-and-cheddar Ruffles. I’m like, “Let me just try it.” I kind of fell in love with that combination. Now all my friends, especially my fashion friends, know that’s my thing. That’s what they send me for birthdays. I wish I could say that I am very articulate in the differentiations of caviar. I love that old Diahann Carroll Dynasty clip where she was kind of reading Alexis, and she said, “I wouldn’t know. I prefer Petrossian beluga.” I wish I was there and that sophisticated with it, but I just happen to prefer the way Imperia tastes.
I am not a caffeine person. I don’t drink coffee. I have a Pepsi every so often. I don’t drink this every day, but there’s something calming about it. A lot of my choices that I make in life are based on nostalgia. I remember my grandfather, who was one of the only people in my life that I really felt love from, used to always carry peppermints. And although I don’t like eating peppermint candy, there is something about the peppermint tea that is really endearing to me. I can have that flavor and scent that I still remember from being a little boy, and his hugs, and the way he was always going into his pocket and offering me a peppermint. I don’t think older people at that time understood that kids — we don’t want a peppermint. We want Tootsie Rolls, we want sugar, sugar, sugar. But this tea is very nostalgic for me.
Rick has actually become kind of a friend. I started wearing his clothes a few years ago. These boots are men’s boots, but they have a 12-centimeter heel. There’s something about how they speak to both of my sides, my masculine side and my feminine side. There’s also a toughness to the shoes and a toughness to the way he designs and an element of rock and roll that is really cool. For a long time, men didn’t have those types of options. To have something that feels very genderfluid personally speaks to both sides of my personality. It was kind of just a match made in heaven. In my mind I’m practical, but probably impractical for a lot of people, but I’ll just wear them. I wear them whenever the feeling moves me to want to be taller than everybody else.
Birkins have become a little bit of a habit. The Birkin obsession happened with that infamous scene from Sex and the City when Samantha was in the boutique, and she asked the price, and he said, “$4,000.” And she said, “For a bag?” He’s like, “Darling, it’s not a bag. It’s a Birkin.” I was living in New York at the time, so that was what we all ran home to watch. That kind of started the fantasy of, “One day I’ll own one of those.” You work hard and you save and save. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a Birkin when they were $4,000. It’s a reminder of where I come from and how hard I work to be where I am. With my first one, the Haut à Courroies, I did not pay my light bill to get it. Again, with age comes maturity. We all have those little things, right? Whether it’s a Birkin, or a piece of jewelry, to give yourself a pat on the back. My Birkin was my pat on the back. The first one was the most memorable one, and the most sentimental one of all, because that really came at a point where my life was changing. Unfortunately, I had a break-in in my house. That bag meant so much to me because I bought it in my Celine Dion era. I was very heartbroken. I was dressing Celine, I was in Paris. I walked into the boutique, and they’re like, “Oh, Monsieur Roach!”
This particular bag is modeled after the flagship store in Paris. It’s a very rare bag and a very hard-to-get one, so when they offered it to me, I took it. I like to live in my things. I never want to be the person that’s just sticking stuff on the shelf and just looking at it. If we love it, we should wear it as much as possible. I actually just carried it a couple of days ago. It’s sitting on my counter, actually. I want to appreciate the things I work so hard for. Sometimes we buy things and we’re like, “Oh, well, I’ll wear it when something special happens.” And then you end up having all these things that you never got a chance to live in because you were waiting for a special moment. I think we should create those moments.
These are my go-tos. Tom Ford is the master of American jet-set luxury, of sleek, minimalistic designs. I just love the design of these sunglasses. I love the way they frame my face. He continues to do the same kind of thing season after season; it’s not really a departure. Like I said, I live in my things and I wear my things, and sometimes, I leave them in the back of an Uber or at a restaurant, so I could always replace them.
I didn’t get a chance to do it a lot when I was working, but during the holidays, I love going to big-box stores and getting socks, sweatpants, and sweatshirts, and all those things. I love to get them really big and oversize. With my family, they’re always like, “Well, what do we give? You got everything.” These sweatpants became a very inexpensive gift for people to give me because I actually really do love them and wear them and sometimes travel in them. Sometimes I’ll wear a pair of Hanes sweatpants with a great McQueen coat on top of it. I’m just adding my touches and a little glitter to it. We should be able to have different options and choices. Style shouldn’t be a monolith. It should be a mixture of all types of things. So, yeah, that’s what I get for Christmas, and I’m very happy and thrilled every time I do. I usually tend to go for the grays. I love a white athletic sock. I go from Tom Ford sunglasses to Hanes from Target and Walmart. But actually, that is who I am.
I like a lot of the La Roche-Posay products. When I’m in Paris, that is the way people pronounce my name. My name is Law Roach. There’s nothing fancy about my last name. It is exactly what it is. It is the thing that you step on, as you can see. But when I started to travel internationally, people would add an accent aigu with an “E” to the end of it. I made that correlation: “Oh, that’s the product and also what people call me.” So I just started trying their products. They have this double moisturizer that I really love and this lip balm. With beauty products, it’s all about trial and error, and figuring out what you like, what works best for you. The fact that we have the same name basically just makes the story better and gives a little intent behind it.
This collaboration with CB2 is all about creating those special moments. Let’s create our own opulence. That’s my word for the season. But opulence means something different to me than it probably does to you. What makes this collaboration authentic for me is that it feels like it’s for everyone. We all can have a piece of it because it’s obtainable, but it also still feels modern and luxurious. I hope that people who see it feel joy and get to bring some of that joy into their house with their friends and families over the holidays.
This bar cart reminds me of things that I saw in thrift stores when I used to go thrifting with my grandmother when I was a young boy in Chicago. My grandma used to call it junking. She would be like, “We’re going to go junk Sunday after church.” I remember she collected salt and pepper shakers, and so she would bring me into that area full of knickknacks. It didn’t strike me right away, but seeing all these pieces is nostalgic and reminds me of things I saw growing up on those treasure hunts. My L.A. home has a lot of black, my kitchen is black. Everything that I chose for this collaboration is reminiscent of the things in my house that I’ve curated over the past couple of years.
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