Shopping

'Rose' perfume can smell green, spicy, powdery, sparkly, fruity or more. The ubiquity of roses in early to mid-February can be overwhelming (their prices, shocking), but their association with love and romance - and perfume - is hardly a modern convention. Roses are referenced in Greek and Roman mythology, and humans have distilled fragrant oils from rose petals for millennia. Rosewater colognes were popular with both sexes in the 19th century. But it's only recently that scientists discovered that essential rose oil contains more than 400 individual components.

SOMEWHERE between a dorm-room poster of Monet's waterlilies and the Robert Rauschenberg painting owned by Eli Broad is another level -- the beginnings of an art collection that can be built by anyone with a few grand to spend.

Playa Vista was the last major coastal community in Los Angeles to be built, but a crucial retail development to give it its own downtown was stalled by legal challenges. That's about to change. With court victories in hand, developers have unveiled the design of a long-anticipated shopping and apartment complex they will begin building in June as the key element of the second and final phase of Playa Vista. The $260-million project, called Runway at Playa Vista, is intended to be the commercial and social heart of the planned community that has been under construction for more than a decade on land once controlled by aviation mogul Howard Hughes south of Marina del Rey. Playa Vista already has more than 3,200 residences and 2 million square feet of offices but lacks a commercial and social town center, said Patti Sinclair, co-president of Playa Capital, the master developer of Playa Vista.

By now, there's probably a stack of 'em on the living room floor--all delivered just to you from all over the planet because it's that time of year. We know this is true because we're buried in them here at this desk, dubbed Catalog Central: gobs, mountains, truckloads of the glossy spreads hawking those hard-to-find gifts for that person on your holiday list who is hard to shop for. Or so you thought.

The $1.5 billion Paramount Park in Spain hopes to rival Disneyland Paris as a European tourist destination when the movie theme park debuts in spring 2015. > Photos: Paramount Park Murcia theme park in Spain Located on the Mediterranean coast about 270 miles southeast of Madrid, Paramount Park Murcia will feature 30 attractions with an adjacent shopping center, hotels and casino. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2012 on a 100-acre theme park set around a central lake that will combine the themed lands of Disneyland with the movie backlots of Universal Studios . While not an investor, Paramount Pictures will license movie properties to the developer and provide design direction for the theme park.

Shopping centers have always been about more than shopping. Before the rise of Internet-based social interaction, malls were a workplace, gathering place and pop culture petri dish for the better part of two generations. That made them the perfect backdrops for the kinds of films that filled the '80s and '90s - for the most part geographically ambiguous, lost-in-the-crowd tales of teen angst, budding (or imploding) romance, the everyman chafing under the yoke of social hierarchy and the bullies that come with it. In short, the mall setting was a grown-up version of the childhood playground - and, perhaps most important, a place that would look fairly familiar to everyone.

Re "Israelis split on Sabbath shopping," June 10 The traditional Jewish holy day of rest, Shabbat, is facing competition from secular shops, movie theaters, restaurants, pubs and clubs around Israel seeking Saturday business. On average, about 40% of their weekly sales currently come from hundreds of thousands of Sabbath customers. And the economic growth is ubiquitous. Reminiscent of the days of "blue laws" in America, when shopping on Sundays was taboo, many Israelis are now questioning why Saturdays should be different than any other day. Dan Anzel Los Angeles Interesting article about observing the Sabbath in Israel.

Among the funky boutiques, tattoo parlors and foodie restaurants that line eclectic Melrose Avenue, there's a new sight that has longtime store owners and shoppers alarmed: a glut of empty storefronts and for-lease signs. The situation has gotten so bleak in recent months that along one stretch of Melrose, between Fuller and Martel avenues, one-third of the stores are vacant. And that's despite drastic rent reductions from landlords: A few years ago, retail space went for $5 to $6 a square foot, commercial real estate agents said, but prices lately have fallen to $2 to $3 a square foot — rates not seen in more than a decade.

Venture capital investor Charlie Federman took his daughters to a Paramus, N.J., mall one day and went home with an idea for an Internet business with the potential to deliver a coveted demographic: teenage girls who like to shop. Federman, a managing partner of Crossbar Capital, is the founder of PlumWillow, a website that piggybacks on Facebook to create a social shopping network for girls. Federman and Crossbar Capital provided the seed money for PlumWillow, and he put together a team of executives experienced in launching Internet and technology companies.