She’s Created the Shopper’s Dream Job for Herself
All her life, Edan Rattner has been a shopaholic, but not the Tori Spelling variety. As soon as she got her driver’s license, at age 16, she drove around San Diego hitting the Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul thrift shops.
This was in 1980, before the vintage clothing boom, and with her keen eye for fashion, Rattner knew to snap up ‘50s bowling shirts for 50 cents each. When a specialty boutique offered her $4 apiece for them, a career was born.
Almost two decades later, Rattner is still shopping around the clock, only now it’s a full-time job rather than a hobby. Rattner is a “rag picker,” scavenging used clothing at secondhand stores and rummage sales, then reselling them to trendy vintage clothing boutiques in Hollywood.
“I’m an archeologist,” Rattner says as she scans the men’s section of the Valley Thrift store in North Hollywood.
A black Yves St. Laurent shirt priced at $2.95 catches her eye. But, designer label notwithstanding, she rejects it: “Too dingy.”
Then she spots a denim jacket with its arms hacked off and “Motley Crue” hand-painted on the back.
“The cheesier aspects of ‘80s clothing are coming back,” she says, slipping the cringe-tastic item into her shopping cart. “Metal bands are especially hot.”
The jacket cost her 95 cents.
About an hour later, she will sell it to a boutique on Melrose Avenue for $7.20. She will earn only $6.25 on the deal, but when you consider it’s a 700% markup--and you add a few dozen other pieces to the pile--it adds up to a decent living.
“I just love to shop!” Rattner says. “I would do it seven days a week if I could.”
As she pokes through the polyester pants, she rattles off some trade secrets: Black is the best color to buy; red and yellow are harder sells. Men’s shirts are best if big; women’s are best if small. Ring-necked T-shirts and rayon slips are in; sweatshirts and Izod Lacoste polo shirts are out.
Rattner’s speech stops suddenly when a fresh rack of clothing is rolled out from the back of the store. She almost runs to the rack, jumping in and literally rubbing shoulders with three other shoppers.
“There’s no such thing as a good store or a bad store,” she says. “You just have to get there at the right time.”
She leaves Valley Thrift with a handful of items, then hits the Sav-Mor thrift store nearby for another cartload of finds. Typically she will return home to wash, mend or alter the clothing. But today she heads straight to try to sell her wares to Squaresville, a Los Feliz boutique that carries carefully selected vintage clothing that’s currently fashionable.
Like most resale boutiques, Squaresville buys clothing from anyone who brings in the goods that fill the bill. The shop depends especially upon pickers like Rattner who know the market. There, Rattner doubles her money on a black tube top she bought moments before. A black-beaded ‘50s sweater she snagged for $3 at a rummage sale will net her $11.20.
“I like to triple or quadruple my money,” Rattner says. “I never spend more than $3 on a single item unless it’s a leather jacket.”
She nets $202.20 by selling 37 items at Squaresville. Then she zips to Wasteland on Melrose.
“I’m a sucker for bad ‘80s clothing and Edan knows it,” says Evan Hughes, a buyer at Wasteland. He immediately snaps up the Motley Crue jacket. He also gives her $9.60 for a cowboy hat she fixed up with feathers and $14.40 for a reversible Chinese silk jacket. Twenty-four items later, Edan exits the store with $190.60 in cash.
It’s 2 p.m., late in a picker’s day. Tomorrow she’ll return to her favorite thrift store at 8:55--five minutes before they open.
“It’s not that I worry about the other pickers getting the finds,” she says. “My only enemies are moth holes and cigarette burns.”
