For Greg Chait, the enigmatic man – and mind – behind luxe knitwear label The Elder Statesman, Los Angeles has proven practicality and opportunity in equal parts.

“Truth is, you can change modalities all day,” Chait said of living in Santa Monica and working in nearby Culver City. “Today, I could start out in Malibu. I can be here at our manufacturing space or I can go to LACMA. I can go to Fairfax and then see Surpreme and go to the Chateau or go hike. I can do it all without seeing one fashion person the whole day, and I clearly live in the middle of it all.”

Chait’s setup is anything but ordinary, choosing to house his own factory next door to his office–   a strategic step to oversee production and create an under-the-radar enterprise that’s agile, fast and remarkably responsive.

“I have a really unique business in the sense that there’s one of these,” Chait said, grabbing a hold of his sweater. “If you’re putting this in someone else’s factory, you can’t do that.

“It was practical for keeping the creativity where I wanted it and the quality where I wanted it,” he added, noting that working with such an expensive raw material as cashmere allows him more flexibility, whereas cotton would impose more limits on one-off production.

And the creative charge in Culver City alone, a hotbed for innovative businesses, seems ripe for Chait’s own brand to continue to blossom. “We have Apple next to us and we’re making sweaters, and we’re actually producing here,” he said. “It’s quite unique that we’re producing stuff. No one else is manufacturing around here.”

Yet despite the creative energy in his own backyard – and the undeniable influx of talent relocating to L.A. – Chait still manages to see a good balance.

“There are so many great people moving here, and L.A. is so big, it can hold it,” he said. “You can kind of feel all the good influence because it’s there, but it’s not so in your face. You get the best of both worlds.”

And he’s quick to point out that  because of this, L.A. fosters a real individuality in both design and talent.

“I think in New York —  not just New York, but anywhere where there is a close-knit circle —  a lot of the clothes are the same and a lot of people are okay with their stuff kind of looking the same as other brands…and that’s my worst nightmare,” he said.

“I love L.A.  because there are no two Libertines. There’s Johnson and there’s Johnson. Rodarte is its own thing. The Row started here, and it’s uniquely The Row. There’s one Chrome Hearts, and there’s one Elder Statesman. There’s one Irene [Neuwirth]. There’s a lot of creativity but it’s all ours because you get to be yourself here and it’s not the dominant industry. The dominant industry is film and television so we’re still the cute kids on the block, so we don’t have the pressure. We get a lot of support and it’s not as serious.”

L.A. afforded Chait that individuality and was the launching pad for The Elder Statesman (which he initially started in a neighbor’s garage), and he never looked back.

Of starting the line the week before the market crashed in 2008, he said, “This all I know. I started in L.A. and this is where I am, so I don’t know what limitations there are. I only know one economy, and that’s a bad one.”

L.A. has enabled Chait to develop an integrated business that continues to innovate and speak directly – and quickly – to what’s inspiring him at any given moment. And most days, that’s still L.A.