Lifestyle
The 'Met Gala of L.A.:' What attendees wore to Born X Raised's 10th annual Sadie Hawkins dance
By 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, hundreds of people were crowded outside the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, waiting to get inside one of Los Angeles’ most anticipated events of the year: Born X Raised‘s annual Sadie Hawkins Winter Formal.
Since 2014, the beloved L.A. streetwear brand has hosted a holiday season affair where attendees come fitted in their freshest formal looks — some of which they plan months in advance — along with a date (or a group of friends) who matches their fly. Born X Raised co-founders Chris “Spanto” Printup and Alex “2Tone” Erdmann held the first Sadie Hawkins dance at a small wood-paneled hall in Highland Park with simple balloons and streamers. It’s since evolved into a F.O.M.O-inducing, invite-only function where both supporters and A-list celebrities cross their fingers to slip inside before the venue reaches capacity.
“It’s like L.A.’s unofficial New Year’s Eve,” says Erdmann, who wore a champagne-colored suit to this year’s event. “This is the party that you drive around trying to find. Everyone comes here.”
With a surprise performance from rapper YG and another from a mariachi artist, last year’s event was dedicated to Printup, who died in a car accident in June 2023. Erdmann says he considered canceling the event following his business partner’s death — the party was Printup’s “baby” — but he decided to push forward because it’s become a festive tradition for so many Angelenos every November.
This year’s gathering marked the 10-year anniversary . To celebrate the milestone, Erdmann and organizers constructed a wedding chapel where guests could tie the knot under the tagline “Born X Raised Marriages Last Forever, This Is Legally Binding.” There was also a photo booth decorated with a nostalgic balloon arch and dozens of red roses, which guests filtered through as DJs including Kitty Cash and Giselle Peppers played sets in the background. The soundtrack for the evening was Kendrick Lamar’s latest album, “GNX,” West Coast classics and other party bangers.
We caught up with attendees at the high-energy party, which one person called “the Met Gala of L.A.,” to ask them about their outfit inspiration. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Nyles Washington
Nyles Washington
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 28
Neighborhood: Mid-City
Have you been to this party before?
This is my first time, but I’m familiar with Born X Raised.
Tell us about your outfit. I went to Goodwill. I knew that whatever I found I was going to look good in it. I got everything but the hat and the shoes from there.
I’m from Houston. My girlfriend got me these Harley-Davidson cowboy boots. My hat is from Texas and it says my name inside of it.
Why do you think this event is so special?
My good friend is helping out with everything. I’ve heard that it’s really insane, but once you get in, it’s super worth it.
Queenie Sateen and Anatole Heger
Queenie Sateen, left, and Anatole Heger.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Age:
Sateen: [Declined to answer]
Neighborhood:
Sateen: Hollywood
Have you been to this party before?
Sateen: No, but my friend comes every year and said it’s fun.
Tell me about your outfit.
Sateen: I was just trying to match my boyfriend. It’s giving funeral. I wanted to be [rudest] at the funeral.
Lorenz Christopher
Lorenz Christopher.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 26
Neighborhood: Downtown L.A.
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been here like four times.
Tell us about your outfit. I just came back from Japan, so I had to cop Kapital out there. I have Ed Hardy on, a one-of-one with a rhinestone embellishment on the back, and I have a gold chain with Jesus on it. Shout out to God.
Why do you think this event is so special? The people. The vibes. The brand itself. Shout out to Spanto and shout out to all of the homies who work for them as well.
Kacey Littleton
Kacey Littleton.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 25
Neighborhood: Echo Park
Have you been to this party before? I had a couple of friends say I should come, so I came.
Tell us about your outfit. This was kind of loosely inspired by English horse riding. I got the chaps on and the riding boots. I was just feeling like royalty. The mask brings a little twist like I’m at some secret party. It’s like the movie “Eyes Wide Shut.” I already owned this. I like to keep it pretty crazy and have a bit of spice every day. It keeps me going.
Why do you think this event is so special? It just brings a great group of people together. I recognize a lot of people here and I ran into a lot of friends, so it was really cool seeing that crossover from my own life, but also this event.
Blair Quinones
Blair Quinones.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 27
Neighborhood: Altadena
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been once like three years ago. I wore Moschino last year.
Tell us about your outfit. I wanted to wear gold jewelry, so I planned to wear an all lace dress, but I found this gold one in my closest and thought it was a little more classy. My sister gave it to me years ago.
Why do you think this event is so special? I feel like the people who are from L.A. are embracing it more than ever because there is a lot to be prideful about. And then of course, the people who knew Spanto are celebrating him. I didn’t know him personally, but my friends did and so there’s just so much appreciation for him.
Zackariah Arceyut
Zackariah Arceyut.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Age: 25
Neighborhood: Boyle Heights
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been at least five times.
Tell us about your outfit. It’s basically a mariachi-inspired outfit. My jacket is from a Mexican-owned L.A. brand called Vertical Authority. The studs on it remind me of my best friend’s [heritage]. He’s from Southeast Asia. So my outfit is like intertwining my culture — I’m half Mexican, half Nicaraguan — with my best friend’s culture.
Why do you think this event is so special? I love that it brings multiple cultures together and everybody’s having a good time. There’s never any issues. And I love how they are honoring Spanto. I think it’s beautiful that we can continue this in his name. It’s one of the ways we can continue to honor him and have so much love under one roof.
Dime Jones
Dime Jones.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 32
Neighborhood: Leimert Park
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been three times.
Tell us about your outfit. My outfit inspo was Fran Lebowitz. Strong woman making moves.
Why do you think this event is so special? I think it gives L.A. a form of culture. L.A. is so spread out, so you don’t get to see people, their style and how they’re dressing, so this is a great way to bring people together at the end of the year.
Copelan Cash and Kennady Schneider
Copelan Cash, left, and Kennady Schneider.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age:
Cash: 30
Schneider: 27
Neighborhood:
Cash: Fillipinotown
Schneider: Crenshaw
Have you been to this party before?
Cash: I’ve been here six times.
Schneider: This is my first one.
Tell us about your outfit.
Cash: I have on pinstripe with the white loafers.
Schneider: I wanted to wear something elegant and timeless.
Why do you think this event is so special?
Cash: Born X Raised is family. Spanto and all the homies. It’s my community. It’s my culture.
Jermaine Mitchell
Jermaine Mitchell.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 32
Neighborhood: Downtown L.A.
Have you been to this party before? This is my third year in a row.
Tell us about your outfit. I’m wearing Theo Official. They dress me a lot. I wanted something festive to wear.
Why do you think this event is so special? I love the community. I love coming together as a group and looking fabulous.
Brisedia Leon
Brisedia Leon.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 27
Neighborhood: Long Beach
Have you been to this party before? This is my first time. I learned about the Born X Raised brand a year ago from my friends.
Tell us about your outfit. I got my look from small L.A. businesses. I want to stand out. I got this necklace … from a brand called Jiggly Junk.
Dame
Dame.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Age: 47
Neighborhood: Los Angeles
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been before. I’m friends with the owners.
Tell us about your outfit. You’ve got to get dressed up, so I wore a suit.
Why do you think this event is so special? I just think people need to be cultured and come together.
Freddie Gibbs, Grammy-nominated rapper
Freddie Gibbs
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been at least 5 or 6 times. Spanto was one of my best friends.
Tell us about your outfit. I knew everybody was going to dress in dark colors, so I wanted to stand out.
Why do you think this event is so special? Because of Spanto. He was the nuts and bolts of all of this [stuff]. He brought all these people together. He [was] a real star. I was at his memorial last year. We’re doing it for him every year.
Zolee Griggs, actor
Zolee Griggs.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been four or five times.
Tell us about your outfit. I wanted to go old-school Hollywood, dramatic sequins.
Why do you think this event is so special? I think what makes it special are all the L.A. natives who are still able to make it out, and I love that it’s the one time of the year for L.A. people to actually dress up.
Guapdad 4000, rapper
Guapdad 4000.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Have you been to this party before? I’ve been going since I moved to L.A. eight years ago.
Tell us about your outfit. I didn’t even want to go outside because something weird happened to me after this event last year, so my energy was [messed] up. I put this [stuff] together last minute because the universe is always going to find a way to remind me that I’m a great [person].
Why do you think this event is so special? I was introduced to it as something my musician, creative and fashion friends just went to. It was already established. The culture was already there, so I had to catch up.
Entrepreneur David Huang tests out a VR headset while conducting demonstrations of the social dance lesson app Dance Guru at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., June 17, 2026.
Chloe Veltman/NPR
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Chloe Veltman/NPR
Wedding season is in full swing, bringing with it a familiar sense of dread for anyone who fears the dance floor.
But relief may finally be at hand with the help of a new app, Dance Guru, and a virtual reality (VR) headset.
The social dance instruction app transports users to a spacious, digital dance studio. Waiting inside is a computer-generated coach: a handsome, male avatar wearing a shirt open to his navel. He speaks with a slightly gravelly English accent.
“Watch me now,” he instructs at the start of a waltz lesson — which NPR tried out at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., an annual conference showcasing the latest developments in virtual and augmented reality.
The avatar then demonstrates a basic box step.
From there, the lesson becomes interactive. The coach tells the user to hold his hand while an electric pinging sound tracks the student’s foot placement.
“One, two, three, four, five, six,” the virtual teacher counts down.
When the user stumbles, he remains remarkably patient. “Do not worry, foundations take time. Let’s try that again. Work on grounding your steps more intentionally.”
Solving the beginner’s dilemma
Dance Guru creator David Huang said he came up with the idea for the app a couple of years ago out of frustration.
“I always wanted to learn to dance and I was always terrible at it,” Huang said. “And I always ended up stopping midway through the lessons.”
He soon realized that many beginners hit the exact same roadblocks.
“Private lessons are too expensive, and you feel like you’re always forgetting the dance steps,” Huang said. “You cannot find a partner to dance with. So I figured maybe I can create something like this.”
The Dance Guru platform currently offers tutorials in salsa, bachata, waltz, and cha-cha, in both lead and follow modes. To make the digital instruction feel authentic, Huang used motion-capture technology to record the movements of real-life dance teachers — with their permission.
Building on the legacy of online tutorials and video games
Dance Guru belongs to a small but growing wave of apps using VR to demystify social dance. At a nearby booth, conference attendee Victor Chen is testing out a competing app called Trip the Light. It currently offers salsa lessons, as well as freestyle options, where a user can dance with a partner without having to learn specific steps.
Trip the Light’s booth at the Augmented World Expo included posters of the app’s virtual instructors. Real-life performers, who gave Trip the Light permission to motion capture their movements, were used as a basis for these avatars.
Chloe Veltman/NPR
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Chloe Veltman/NPR
“A lot of times when you’re trying to learn a choreography, it’s watching a YouTube video and you have to pause it, rewind, and play it,” Chen said. “If you were to have a virtual avatar dancing in front of you and correcting for any parts that you missed, it might be a lot easier.”
Interactive video games like Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance, and YouTube tutorials have been helping people improve their skills in private for years. But those games are mostly aimed at solo players. Unlike the new generation of immersive VR apps, they cannot simulate the mechanics or confidence required for partner dancing on a live dance floor.
The reality check
But this kind of app won’t work for every dancer.
“Everyone learns a little bit differently. And so unless you have a game that has lots of different ways of teaching, you’re going to have things that work for some people and don’t work for others,” said Ariana Katana, a trained contemporary dancer and dance content creator who’s active on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms. “Also, it’s hard to dance with a headset on.”
And then there’s the issue of not being able to physically feel a virtual partner’s hand or shoulder while dancing with them. Patrick Ascolese, the creator of Trip the Light, said the experience could become more tactile in the future. “Haptic suits and wearables will be coming, but I think we’re a little away from that,” he said.
Ascolese said even with their limitations, immersive tools like Trip the Light have immense potential as judgment-free training grounds — giving reluctant dancers the baseline confidence they need to eventually step onto the dance floor with real partners in the real world, including at weddings.
“Just like anything else, practice makes perfect,” said Ascolese. “So the more time you spend in VR with a virtual partner, it works towards helping you get over that social hurdle. We are teaching you the moves that you have to do in order to go out and have fun.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited the broadcast and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
For half a century, Deidre Hall has taken on every kind of disaster in the drama-packed town of Salem, Ill., as a star of “Days of Our Lives.”
There was the time — actually, it happened twice — when her character, Dr. Marlena Evans, was famously possessed by the devil and even levitated.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Or the time a serial killer, who was actually Marlena under hypnosis, seemed to kill several beloved characters. The long-running show’s storylines have become legendary, and in March, while promoting “Hail Mary,” actor Ryan Gosling even gave Hall a shout-out, admitting he was a fan, praising the hard work of soap opera actors and calling her an “OG acting inspiration.”
But Hall’s real life in Santa Monica is much quieter than her character’s, and she likes it that way.
“When I bought my house in Santa Monica, I didn’t realize how great it would be to live near Montana Avenue,” says Hall, 78, about the popular shopping spot. Every day, she walks to the main street with her golden retriever, Riley, and enjoys Pilates, art and good food along the way. “The owners of the Farms Market even keep dog biscuits, so guess where the dog wants to go every time we walk — the Farms, of course,” she says, laughing.
When she isn’t filming the daily soap opera, which airs on Peacock, Hall enjoys raising monarch butterflies, exploring the shops and restaurants on Montana, and hosting movie nights at home with her two sons.
Here’s what a perfect day in L.A. looks like for her.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7 a.m.: Breakfast and dog walk
I usually kick off my day with a protein shake, feed our golden retriever and take her out for a walk. She’s a phenomenal girl. When we adopted her, her name was Riley, but I did think about naming her after Mrs. Hughes from “Downton Abbey.”
10 a.m.: Church and garden time
After I walk the dog and go to church, I like to spend some time in my yard. I’m not a natural gardener, but I really enjoy it. I started raising monarch butterflies because my identical twin sister, who played my twin on the show, planted a butterfly garden. Monarchs are amazing because they are transitional. Every year, they travel from Mexico to southern New England, but it’s getting harder for them. Their numbers have dropped by about 80%. To help, I plant milkweed, which is what they need to survive. I buy my milkweed from the Staghorn Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Julie, who owns the nursery, is delightful and has a wide variety of milkweed. The monarchs always seem to find my garden. Julie was raising some caterpillars too, and she cared a lot about them. We talked about how important it is to help the butterflies. That’s why I do this. Sometimes I get milkweed with eggs already on it, and Julie knows her butterflies are going to a good home.
1 p.m.: Walk to Montana Avenue for some lunch
I live near Montana and love taking long walks, going to Pilates and trying out the great restaurants nearby, like R+D Kitchen and La La Land. I’m a big fan of the waffles at the Courtyard Kitchen. Just a few days ago, I had a chicken salad on raisin bread with an Arnold Palmer, and it was delicious. It is right on Montana and has a nice outdoor seating area. It’s one of my favorite spots. La La Land always has a long line in the morning, which is perfect if you want coffee. They serve coffee, doughnuts, croissants and avocado toast. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, and you can even bring your dog.
2 p.m.: Peek inside a clock shop
There’s a small clock shop on Montana Avenue that’s closed on Sundays, but if you walk by, you’ll see all kinds of clocks — standing, table and wall clocks. The owner is great at fixing them. Once, I bought a wall clock from MacKenzie-Childs, but it didn’t work. And I was really upset because it matched everything else on my countertop. I brought it to the owner and said, “I love this, but I can’t make it work.” He fixed it right away. His name is John, but I call him Geppetto. And we all know why. He really does have a magic touch.
2:30 p.m.: Visit a neighborhood art gallery
Ten Women Gallery is run by 10 artists, all of whom show their work there. I was drawn to some watercolors there, bought a few cards and spoke with one of the artists. She told me, “You seem to love watercolors,” and mentioned that the artist who painted them, Pamela Harnois, lives in Los Angeles and teaches nearby. I got Pamela’s name and found out she taught at the Brentwood Art School. I was so inspired by her gift that I started taking private lessons with her on Saturdays. That gallery is where I discovered my love for watercolor painting.
3 p.m.: Grab some ice cream at Rori’s
The other day, my longtime girlfriend wanted to get ice cream and told me, “We are walking to Rori’s Artisanal Creamery.” It’s a small shop on Montana near Lincoln. They make everything themselves, using local ingredients from grass-fed cows with no added hormones. The place is family-owned and probably has the healthiest ice cream you’ll find. They switch up their flavors often, but my favorite is the salted caramel.
6 p.m.: Family dinner and movie night at home
R+D Kitchen is always packed, so my sons, who are 31 and 33, do the cooking. They come over, and together we make salads and cook dinner. There’s a neighborhood grocery store called the Farms, off Montana, a small family-run place that has everything we need. Everyone knows each other there, and people bring their dogs. We try to have movie night every Sunday. Sometimes the day changes, but we always make sure to have one night a week where we cook a meal and sit down as a family. Keeping that tradition has become really important to us. My sons are great cooks, which is funny because they definitely didn’t get that from me. [Laughs]
9 p.m.: Take Riley for one last walk and visit neighbors
After dinner, I take my dog for a walk. It’s a great way to meet neighbors. We always go around the same block. We’ve met so many people, and since she’s a golden retriever, she loves meeting everyone.
10 p.m.: News, knitting and bedtime
I am a news junkie, so I usually watch whatever is on the news before I go to bed. I have a long-standing passion for knitting. Lately, though, the news would make me drop a stitch.
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