Olivia Lopez HAS transformed A LIFETIME OF TRAVEL, STORYTELLING, AND CULTURAL CURIOSITY INTO LOS ANGELES’S
most buzzed-about WINE BAR/GATHERING SPACE: Seco.
Having built a loyal following with long-running lifestyle blog Lust for Life, Lopez has spent more than a decade documenting her take on fashion, interiors, hospitality, and design.
With Seco, she brought those worlds together, creating a natural wine bar inspired by the café cultures of Paris, Milan, and Mexico City. The result is an art-forward neighborhood destination that feels deeply personal. Lopez tells us about multicultural upbringing in Los Angeles that shaped her palate, the decade of travel that inspired Bar Seco, and the laser focus on her latest venture Studio OL. Read about Olivia Lopez’s journey in her C&C 100 interview below.
What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in LA? What does the city’s food and wine scene offer that is unlike any other place you’ve traveled?
Growing up, all our gatherings happened around food. I was raised by my Filipino mother and a European stepfather, and despite their cultural differences, my parents shared a deep love and reverence for exploring new cuisines. That curiosity around food shaped me growing up, and continues to be our love language to this day.
What makes LA’s food and wine scene unique is the city’s long-standing appreciation for quality ingredients, local produce, and the influence of the immigrant communities that make it home. I love the medley of Latin and Asian flavors that make their way to our plates. There’s a purist approach to selecting the finest ingredients for California-coastal cuisine, while the Asian food in LA is some of the best and most authentic in the country.
As a multi-hyphenate creative, what drew you to the concept of building Barr Seco?
I spent a formative part of my twenties working in Paris, spending evenings over carafes of wine in low-lit, intimate wine bars, and visiting Milan for Design Week. It was strolling through the streets of Paris and Milan that the dream of opening a café-bar took hold. Milan has a unique café culture centered on ritual and community, where many days start and end at a corner neighborhood watering hole.
When I moved back to LA in 2022, I met my neighbor — a third-generation restaurateur from Mexico City and founder of a restaurant group over breakfast one morning. We found ourselves sharing the same longing for the bar and café culture in La Condesa, Le Marais and Lower East Side. That conversation became Seco.
Many people think a creative director's job sounds glamorous, but what’s a surprisingly challenging aspect of your work?
The real challenge is sensing where culture is moving before it fully arrives. It requires being an active participant in culture, and I think the role of a good creative director is to interpret those shifts and give them form at the right moment.
Can you walk me through your creative process of developing the concept and theme of Barr Secco? Where did your best ideas come from?
There’s an expression I’ve adopted from writing that applies to business: the personal is universal. The idea that the more specific you are, the more likely you are to connect with others on a broader level. Seco began as a deeply personal want — to create an art-forward, community-driven natural wine bar rooted in memories of convening in similar café-bars around the world.
My best ideas came from those lived experiences. The concept was shaped by a decade of travel — evenings at Aux Deux Amis in Paris, the neighborhood ease of Hugo in Mexico City, the electric, art-filled atmosphere of Bar Basso in Milan. The wine program was blueprinted in Paris, where I was introduced to a new way of thinking about natural wine at places like Le Verre Volé and Septime. The design drew from modernist Mexico City homes I’d been covering extensively, Parisian brasseries, and Copenhagen cafés. Even the green-tiled bar traces back to a kitchen I fell in love with at a bed and breakfast in Oaxaca.
Much of the invisible work happened behind the scenes — over a decade of design and hospitality writing and consulting , months of market research, and a summer R&D trip to Europe to research café furniture. The through-line was always travel and personal memory. Seco is located steps from Sunset Junction, where I grew up sneaking into music festivals as a teenager. That history informed everything.
How do you stay inspired and able to consistently dream up good ideas when you’re involved in so many different creative ventures?
I’m consumed by a natural curiosity which drives my inspiration. Movement, observations and conversations with other creative peers constantly spur up new ideas and I’m grateful that flow of inspiration comes easily and freely.
Did you raise capital for your business—and if so, what surprised you most about the process?"
My business partners led the fundraising rounds. The most surprising though not at all uncommon reality is that restaurants are almost always delayed, and delays lead to a lot of unplanned capital. Construction timelines rarely hold, and every week a space sits unfinished is a week of overhead without revenue.
What goals for the future do you have that both excite you and scare you?
This year I’m launching Studio OL, an advisory that brings together over a decade of work at the intersection of culture, design and hospitality. I’m excited to continue world-building for third spaces and translating a career spent inside culture into spaces that feel genuinely of the moment.
How do you want people to feel when they experience Barr Seco for the first time?
I want it to feel familiar and welcoming. Our team are genuine, creative and warm. Each dish on our menu has been thoughtfully vetted. Every piece of art and object is hand picked and hand-made, and I think those personal details translate to feelings of familiarity.
Rapid fire POP QUIZ:
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is:
prepare a tea and review my calendar for the day.
If I had one more hour in the day, I would:
finish the book on my nightstand.
A song that describes the era I’m in right now is:
places to be by Fred Again
My current obsession is:
St Germain’s Tourist album, the Lebanese kitchen cookbook, a chilled sparkling yogurt from Turkey called Ayran served in a hammered coppered cup.
My best ideas come from…
being out in the world, observing.