THE LOST BUYS
Elizabeth Mason navigates around the main counter of Culver City’s National Charity League Ticktocker Thrift Shop, strides past a barrel sprouting obsolete skis and bindings and enters the Gold Room. Mason is familiar with this sanctum from many past Ticktocker pilgrimages. Here she might happen upon the kind of haute couture she can then resell to the actresses and supermodels who frequent her West Hollywood vintage boutique, The Paper Bag Princess.
A forlorn fur jacket immediately grabs her attention. Assembled from a dozen mismatched rodents, Mason gives it only a moment’s notice, though. “These sort of things are really popular right now,” she says. “All those ‘70s-style nasty little mink coats where you go, ‘Thanks, honey--couldn’t afford the real one?’ ”
The Ticktocker has rarely witnessed such high fashion as Mason’s own outfit. The vintage clothier is not sporting vintage herself this afternoon. Instead, she has chosen an exquisite black pinstripe Azzedine Alaia jacket with matching tailored skirt. Her gleaming black leather shoes are Dolce & Gabbana; her stockings are Wolford.
As resolute as a prospector working a claim, Mason hunches before a low cabinet, flings open the doors and pulls out a succession of sliding trays. The first yields a nest of matted gold and iron-hued wigs, which she sifts through just to make sure that the hair is not camouflaging anything. Another tray is empty, and yet another holds a collection of unmatched gloves.
Mason then turns her gaze toward the racks, where she finds a cobalt blue Ultrasuede shirtdress by Stanley Sherman, a shimmering, gold-threaded hostess dress with a flamboyant black mink vee collar, a double-knit tan number with chocolate trim. Not until she hauls the entire load into the dressing room does she discover that the Sidney North black satiny gown she has plucked out, the one with hip-height fringes, isn’t really a gown at all. “Ah, it’s a jumpsuit,” Mason exults, taking stock of the garment’s tremendous bell-bottom flares. “This is ‘70s for sure! Yeah, this is definitely disco. It’s great!”.
Having mined the Gold Room, Mason enters the Ticktocker’s main area. The scratched records; the cast-off stuffed puppies; the racks upon racks of worn and misshapen and occasionally moth-eaten garments; the clientele of mostly mothers and toddlers and single working-class men--it all seems worlds away from Mason’s recherche boutique, with its tasteful, washed lemon walls, its elevated mannequins sporting museum-grade dresses by Rudi Gernreich, its exclusive rack of designer garments once worn and now consigned by the supermodel Vendela.
“We always check the lingerie,” Mason lectures while rummaging, “because you never know when that Pucci nightgown is going to scream out at you.” (That’s Emilio Pucci, for the uninformed.)
The price of the day’s discoveries is $139.49 without tax, not including a child’s valise with orange and white mushrooms that Mason spots at the last minute and must have. Before departing, though, she attempts to pry one last treasure from the clerk. “Do you have anything else in the back you think I might like?” The Paper Bag Princess melodiously broaches. “I want to know what’s slinky and sexy and disco-ey --that would fit me!”
