Once-Worn Gowns Coming Out of the Closet : Resale Stores Offer High Fashion at Reduced Prices
Just call it a fact of the high life: The more exquisite the gown, the less likely it will be worn more than once.
Whoever said, “Once is not enough,” was not talking about couture: The Galanos or Valentino creation for which a celebrity or socialite might spend as much as $5,000 is intended for no more than the four to six hours of exposure that she’ll get from a single event. Many of these women are simply not about to take a chance of being photographed in the same gown twice.
The Same Dress
“Let me tell you a story,” said Roy Gerber of the personal management firm of the same name in Los Angeles.
“There was a dinner . . . at Chasen’s for the Negro College Fund. There was a very big star there, and I just happened to be helping her get her car. As I looked at her, I thought, holy smoke, she’s wearing the same dress she wore to that party last Christmas!
“Now if I thought that, and I’m not very aware of clothes at all, think of what a journalist, a fan, a producer’s going to think. You and I can wear the same suit 16 times, and nobody’ll notice. But a highly visible socialite or sex symbol?”
In other words, one wearing makes the point--the point being that the wearer is among the best-dressed ladies in the land. A second wearing--well, that could in fact un- make the point.
So just where do those fabulous gowns go?
“Where all dresses that have been worn once go to die,” said interior designer Beverly Thompson-Coil, socially prominent in Newport Beach, arguably the black-tie capital of the world. “To the back of the closet. Never to be heard from again.”
Happily, death by hanging is not the fate of all De la Rentas and Diors.
“Here they are,” said Karen Worchell of Chic Conspiracy in Beverly Hills, indicating racks of designer gowns, “being very good, being fed three times a day.”
Chic Conspiracy is a resale boutique, a haven for recycled rags, heaven for growing numbers of smart women--women to whom $500 sounds a good deal better than $5,000. (Recycled Rags is in fact the name of such a shop in Corona del Mar.)
The concept is not new. What’s new, however, is a new-found and unabashed acceptance of the idea on the part of an ever more fashion-conscious public.
“Resale right now is a phenomenon,” said Joyce Brock of The Place in Los Angeles. “It’s happening, and it’s happening now. We’ve been in business 22 years, and in the last two years business has doubled.
“For years, women came in the store, but never told. Resale had a kind of stigma. But no longer. Now they’re telling all their friends and families.
“You might say resale is out of the closet.”
No Names
Brock’s suppliers are said to include any number of major television and movie stars. But she is unwilling to confirm or deny any names: While the stigma may be fading, shop owners continue to protect buyers and sellers with a cloak of anonymity.
“Who are our clients? Excuse me, but we don’t do that,” Worchell said. “What’s important is the designers’ names, not the clients’ names.”
Jean Harding of Jean’s Star Apparel in Sherman Oaks has been in business since 1958; when asked whom she counted among her clients, she took on the air of an undercover agent.
“Shhhhhhh . . . ,” Harding intoned. “I never tell. But I will tell you we’ve had five gowns go to Reagan’s first inaugural ball, and four this time.”
The reasons for shopping resale are obvious: Prices.
Women “can come here and get an Adolfo or Valentino suit for $200,” Brock said.
“And the real steals are in couture. You can find a Valentino gown originally priced at $2,500 or $3,000 for maybe $200 or $300, a Galanos, normally $5,000, for $500.”
10% of Original Cost
The gowns sell for about 10% of their original cost; consignment agreements range from a 40-60 split to an even 50-50.
“In any case,” Brock said, “these women are getting dresses they could never afford in the better salons.”
The shoppers come from every economic stratum. For those on a very limited budget, the stores might offer an “up-to-$10” rack. And those at the other end of the financial spectrum are evidently not above loving a bargain.
“We get people with money,” Gail Showalter of Snobbish Seconds in Newport Beach said. “They like feeling they’re on a treasure hunt.”
Indeed, many of the customers, by most people’s standards, are wealthy--they’re just not that wealthy. “They drive up in their Rolls,” said Harding, “young doctors’ and attorneys’ wives who have to keep up the front. . . .”
Like a Placement Service
The clothes seem to come in and out of the stores in waves, preceding and following major events. In Los Angeles, that may mean the Academy Awards or the Emmys, but the story is the same in Newport Beach.
“Say there’s a big ball at the Balboa Bay Club,” Dunn said. “Well, just before, they’re buying, just after, they’re selling. . . .”
Many of the boutique owners will operate as something of a placement service. Sharon Case of Repetition in Mission Viejo will alert a certain buyer when a particular supplier brings in her clothes. Margaret Waits of Rags to Riches in Tustin likewise keeps an eye out for her regulars.
“They don’t say I look like an elephant, but I have an elephant’s memory,” Waits said. “I know what my clients want. And I’ve got 3,000 index cards in case I forget.”
The women who sell their clothes are by no means limited to high-power celebs.
“There are lots of women out there who buy a whole wardrobe each season,” Case noted, “from designer jeans to boots to sweaters. Four times a year. And those closets get full !”
While Jan Vitti of Newport Beach can count herself among the affluent, she definitely wears things more than once. On one hand, she has the Chanels and Valentinos; they may hang in her closet for a while, she said, but “they live until they come out again . “ On the other, she has her sports and casual clothes, which both get more use and go out of style more quickly.
Once a year, Vitti goes through her closet. Many of the clothes she sends to Mexico; some go for resale.
“Resale is a neat idea,” Vitti said. “You may not make a fortune, but at the same time you are getting back something on your investment. And now I’m even doing it with the children’s clothes, especially the cotillion dresses.”
Some Never-Worns
Many of the clothes found in the resale boutiques have never been worn.
“Women have a tendency to buy far more than they ever wear,” Showalter explained.
“For example, Neiman-Marcus might have a line of clothes marked down from $1,500 to $500. You can’t resist. You pick up that dress thinking you’re going to wear it, it’s a good deal, but then six months go by . . . .”
Harding indicated two Adolfo dresses, three months old and currently for sale at her store. “When the woman who bought them got them home, she simply didn’t like the way she looked in them.”
While people may find it ironic that so much money is spent on “something to wear” to a charity event, a few of the resale outlets have figured out a way to even turn that expense into charity dollars.
Members of the Las Reinas Auxiliary of the Newport Beach Assistance League donate their castoffs to the league’s thrift shop. The clothes are then wheeled out the first Thursday of every month for a “French Rack Day.” They’re offered to the public but not to league members, and proceeds benefit the league’s dental health center.
Lynn Pinto of Her Closet in nearby Huntington Beach has come up with another idea for the charitably-minded: “For those who are either extremely wealthy, or who really don’t care about the money, we’ve set it up so that we donate their earnings from the consignment to their favorite charity.”
Sometimes the line between buyer and seller is a thin one. It’s not at all unheard of, for instance, for a woman to bring in her castoffs only to take home someone else’s, and the consequences can be interesting.
Worchell reports seeing women at charities wearing each others’ clothes. “They don’t know it. But I know it,” she said.
And Waits of Rags to Riches in Tustin still gets a kick out of a story she once heard about Jacqueline Onassis.
“Evidently, she’d taken in some gowns for resale, stopped to browse a bit and ended up taking home an armful,” Waits recounted.
“When she got home, she realized she’d bought back stuff she’d brought in on an earlier trip!”
