Undressed for Success
In the middle of a cavernous Santa Monica Airport hangar,
Ron Ravicchio, the 48-year-old, well-heeled owner of a tool store, has stripped down to his white dress shirt and black briefs as he scrutinizes the Armani suit he’s about to try on. His wife, Diana, 35 and a size 4, is unclothed down to a black bra and black trousers as she slips a sweater over her head, takes a quick look in the mirror, then replaces the sweater with a sleek dress.
This is the third Barneys New York warehouse sale that the Ravicchios have shopped. “The first time I came, I said, ‘Look at these women--they’re taking their clothes off!’ ” said Diana Ravicchio. “Within an hour, we had our clothes off too.”
Welcome to the semiannual rite of passage for all trendsetters, trend-followers and clotheshorses of Los Angeles.
If Barneys New York is the mecca of fashion department stores, then its 12-day warehouse sale, which kicked off Thursday, is--well, ecstasy, in a word.
This is the fourth year that Barneys has taken over the 35,000-square-foot Barker Hangar and piled in clothes with price tags slashed by 50% to 75%.
This isn’t the only large clearance sale that registers high on the style landscape of L.A.--the Fred Segal sales come to mind--but only Barneys expects so formidable a crowd that it holds it in a giant airplane hangar.
And so they began streaming in at 8 a.m.--more than 500 within the first two hours--guided to parking lots by orange-jacketed traffic controllers reminiscent of a Rolling Stones concert. In the parking lot, a battered Toyota sat across from a gleaming silver Porsche Boxster.
Men and women, affluent and aspiring, young and older, big shoppers resigned to spending hundreds on a single item of clothing and penny-pinchers who would balk at buying full price at Barneys in Beverly Hills--all perused the racks and unabashedly undressed in front of each other. (No dressing rooms here.)
There were, of course, doctors and lawyers and stay-at-home moms, but the first day seemed to bring a lot of entertainment industry folk.
“It’s fun to find a $1,200 Commes des Garcons dress for $120,” said movie actress Lori Petty (“Point Break,” “A League of Their Own”), who says that’s exactly what she did last year at this sale. “That’s kind of the fun of it.”
Forget Barneys’ Beverly Hills atmosphere. There are no blond wood floors, skylights, and techno-hip music. This hangar has less ambience than a Target. Rows of steel racks stand unceremoniously on unfinished floors. Sweaters are piled on tables. Handbags are clumped in cardboard boxes. Even wedding gowns in plastic garment bags are wedged together on a rack. (Not many browsers here.) Shoppers are provided with clear plastic garbage-style bags for collecting their wares.
“The lighting is unbearable,” said Sharon Chalkin-Feldstein, a fashion stylist and costume designer, as she waited in the long line for one of 11 cashiers. But that didn’t matter. She said she was shopping for a couple of clients, including actress Marilu Henner, who’s starring in the Broadway show “Chicago.”
“She wouldn’t miss a Barneys sale,” said the stylist, clutching a gray blazer (“simple, clean, nice”), a skirt and a sweater for Henner.
Some say shopping the Beverly Hills store pales in comparison to this.
“It’s not as exciting,” said fledgling screenwriter Michelle Kasik, 26. “This is about the hunt. I could go for some dressing rooms, but I’ll live.” Kasik wore a long, full, black skirt (“my modesty skirt”) for use as a shield to slip on pants and skirts. On top she wore the black sports bra she routinely wears in the gym.
Paul Schwartzman, an agent for Hollywood writers and directors, was quickly rifling through a variety of sport coats. He shed his sweatshirt, donned a thin turtleneck and tried on a jacket. “Is this too long?” he asked as he scrutinized himself in the mirror.
He regularly comes to the sales. “Last year, I bought nothing. If I do it right, I’ll spend maybe two grand.”
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Like most of the denizens of this sale, the dressing and undressing doesn’t faze him.
“I stripped in front of you,” he told a reporter, laughing. “Did you mind it too much?”
In fact, the male shoppers were full of wisecracks about the dressing. “I actually just come here to watch the girls change in the middle of the aisles,” quipped 31-year-old Stephen Plache.
Not likely. This was a dedicated lot of shoppers with eyes only for the clothes.
When shoppers did look up from their finds, they sometimes saw friends and colleagues.
“I ran into a writer I worked with, I ran into a producer I worked with,” said Chalkin-Feldstein. “You could get a job at this sale.”
Mothers came with their babies--guiltily at times.
“It’s not exactly like he’s enjoying this,” says Nicole Holofcener, the writer and director of the 1996 movie “Walking and Talking,” as she pushed her 5-month-old son in his stroller.
“My husband would say I’m a die-hard shopper. I would say I’m a die-hard looker. I just had to come.”
