A Resale Maven’s Strong Suit
Women with Beverly Hills fashion taste but bank accounts more conducive to shopping on Rosemead Boulevard than Rodeo Drive have been quietly buying their Chanel blazers, Valentino suits and Escada ball gowns from Joyce Brock’s designer resale shop known as the Place & Co. for more than 35 years now.
“The hardest thing about the resale business is that most people don’t want to tell you where they bought their clothes, and that’s how you build a business, through word of mouth,” says Brock.
So when the successful Westchester store owner decided a couple of years ago to introduce “gently used” menswear to the mix, she reasoned the best way to get the word out was with a little star power.
“I called up [Rodeo Drive retailer] Fred Hayman, whom I’d been buying from after his sales for years, and he said he had clothes that had been worn by Jay Leno and Pat Sajak that the studios had returned, and I could have them if I wanted them,” says Brock, who immediately bought the lot and started advertising them. “I also sent out letters to all my women clients and wrote that if your husband has any clothes he’d like to sell to let me know.”
Within days, Brock was fielding calls from all over the country, and by the end of the first month, the menswear racks in her South Sepulveda Boulevard store were stockpiled with suits, sport coats, shirts and ties by an A-to-Z list of designers--from Giorgio Armani, Luigi Borelli and Canali to Donna Karan, Polo Ralph Lauren and Ermenegildo Zegna.
But the Place is no ordinary out-of-the-way resale shop selling someone else’s designer castoffs. All the womenswear is bought on consignment from international businesswomen and millionaire socialites who either keep 50% of the profit or donate their share to charitable causes. Some of the clothes were never worn and still have their original sales tags. Others found in the 4,000-square-foot store are so meticulously cared for it would take an inspector’s magnifying glass to notice an imperfection.
Brock approaches her small menswear department a little differently. Although a smattering comes from the closets of high-profile businessmen with last names like Tisch and Kassen (still visible thanks to dry cleaner’s ink on the labels), the lion’s share is new--either bought and never worn or pulled directly from the stockrooms of now-defunct local retailers such as Fred Hayman and Ron Ross. Brock also buys directly from clothing-makers such as Zanetti, which makes moderately priced suits ($500 and up) overseas and warehouses them in West Los Angeles.
*
Most of the clothes found at the Place aren’t priced to appeal to bargain hunters accustomed to picking through sale tables.
“I can’t live with all that chaos,” says Brock, who personally escorts shoppers through the store’s well-ordered clothing racks and handbag displays. Nevertheless, customers intent on buying designer labels will find substantial savings here.
For instance, a $1,200 double-breasted gray silk suit with the Fred Hayman label still attached is marked down to $445. A taupe wool crepe suit from a recent Donna Karan collection, regularly $1,500 or more, is tagged $595. A Giorgio Armani plaid wool sport coat, usually around $1,000, has a $225 sticker. An entire rack of dress shirts from Armani, Lorenzini, Canali and Luigi Borelli top out at $75 as opposed to their usual starting price of $145.
While size ranges are narrow (2 to 12 for womenswear, 38 to 48 for men’s suits) and most of the items are one-of-a-kind (“When you buy from people’s closets, you usually only find one,” notes Brock), those drawbacks only seem to enhance the Place’s sales receipts.
“The customer who shops here knows I can’t reorder it, so they usually buy on the spot,” she says.
