From ‘Rags’ to Riches, Tarzana Bridal Store Celebrates 55 Years

Tarzana’s Wall Street Plaza is a somber-looking mini mall with grey walls and green roofs overlooking a Whole Foods Market and a Chipotle Mexican Grill. Located on Ventura Boulevard and Yolanda, a block west of Reseda, the area is usually bustling with people and traffic.

This is a terrific spot for just about any store, and it’s where Lisa Litt and her father chose to relocate their growing family bridal wear business 15 years ago after a decade in the Encino section of Ventura Boulevard.

Lili Bridals and Formals celebrates its 55^th anniversary this year. Voted “Best Bridal Shop” by the Los Angeles Daily News in 2009 and winner of the Los Angeles Times Readers’ Choice Awards in 2012, the store offers a wide variety of bridal gowns, bridesmaids’ dresses and cocktail dresses, not to mention headpieces and footwear.

Customers across the Southland shop at Lili Bridals—from San Diego and Santa Barbara to Bakersfield, according to Litt. Jonna Walsh, the spouse of 2010 American Idol winner Lee DeWyze, got her dress and veil from the store.

Litt, who graduated from UCLA with a degree in socilogy in 1989, began apprenticing at the store when she was in high school. Lili Bridals and Formals started out on Crenshaw Boulevard in 1958, a year before the microchip was developed and the space race began.

“It was a very affluent Jewish area and then it became a very affluent Jewish and African American area—and then the Watts riots came and people left for the Valley,” says Litt.

The store is named after Litt’s maternal grandmother, who moved to Los Angeles from Milwaukee so that she could be with her daughter and grandchildren. “My father wanted to give her something to do, so that she could have her own business,” says Litt.

Litt’s father, Sol, was an accountant but his family came from the shmta business in New York City, a Yiddish term for the garment industry that literally means “rags,” says Litt.

“Dad noticed that L.A. did not have many bridal stores and my grandmother could sew and make patterns and was good with people,” says Litt, whose talents, too, seem suitably tailored to the trade.

Initially, Litt’s father did the store’s bookkeeping during his spare time, but the business grew so rapidly that he had to step in full time. “It became a whole family business,” says Litt, who recalls trying on bridal veils at the store and running her fingers along the lace of shiny dresses when she was three years old.

Lili Bridals and Formals, 18663 Ventura Blvd., (818) 774-9700