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NYT Syndicate

Rachel Zabar, looking summery in a star-print Valentino day dress, was on a love seat in her living room. I had already spilled Diet Coke on her Italian coffee table and asked a lot of clueless questions about her flourishing career as a vintage couture dealer. Now, just to be extra-irritating, I was poking through her childhood memories, with a particular focus on Zabar's, her family's famed food emporium in New York.
"Jewish delis, fashion, pouring soda ” you don't know very much about any of these things, do you?" Zabar said. She laughed, kicked off her navy Newbark loafers and took up a cross-legged position on the sofa."No problem! I'll teach you everything. Let's start at the beginning."
Yes, let us. Zabar, 45, worked at Zabar's as a teenager (in the bread department before the caviar counter) and then spent nearly two decades, to Papa Zabar's occasional irritation, hopping from one potential career to another ” photography, documentary films, screenplays. By 2010 she was selling furniture at a flea market.
Maybe it was finally time to make a life at Zabar's, as her older sister and younger brother had successfully done?
But Zabar decided to try again, remaking herself as a dealer of high-end vintage clothes and accessories. Since then, she has gained considerable traction in a challenging market, selling pieces to celebrities (Tracee Ellis Ross, Rihanna), private collectors (Aureta Thomollari), institutions (Tokyo's Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum) and archivists at fashion houses (Saint Laurent, Gucci). In June, Tory Burch bought $30,000 worth of items in one visit.
Anthony Barzilay Freund, the editor of Introspective, the magazine of 1stdibs, the online marketplace where Zabar is one of 250 fashion dealers, praised the quality of her stock."She seems to have that knack for knowing what's about to trend," Freund said."That young, hip, LA vibe ” she totally gets it."
Stylist Simone Harouche, who dresses Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian West and Nicole Richie, said that Zabar"has definitely become one of my top dealers." Calling herself"a total vintage nut," Harouche added,"Rachel always has a piece that is fresh and cool. Her eye is just different than other vintage people out there. She also happens to be a fun, down-to-earth lady. Some vintage dealers can be snooty and difficult."
This world has its characters, to put it mildly. Luxury vintage started to sizzle in the 1990s, when stars like Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman turned up on red carpets in museum-quality designer showstoppers from Lily et Cie, a shop in Beverly Hills owned by Rita Watnick. (Watnick, known for her terrifying candor as much as for her taste, still reigns supreme.)
By 1997, with the arrival of Decades, another upscale shop, Los Angeles had become a vintage epicentre. (The flamboyant co-owner of Decades, Cameron Silver, bills himself as the"king of vintage.")
In the early 2000s, vintage went wide, fuelled by nostalgia for pre-Y2K times and the popularity of eBay. Julia Roberts wore vintage black-and-white Valentino to pick up her Oscar in 2001. Rachel Zoe, often draped in vintage Chlo` and Yves Saint Laurent, became a reality TV star and then a designer drawing unapologetically from the past. What Goes Around Comes Around, a New York boutique, became a chainlet, expanding to Miami Beach and Los Angeles.
By the time Zabar got serious about her vintage business about five years ago, there was very little room for a newcomer. But Zabar persisted.
"It's a sharp-elbowed little world, for sure, and I have learned some business lessons the hard way ” who to trust, how to price, what to focus on," she said."The great wrap-skirt revolution certainly did not unfold as I envisioned." She grimaced."But I was determined. I had to prove to myself that I could stick with something."
Zabar, who has two employees, works out of her home, a 1953 Gregory Ain gem near the Hollywood Bowl. She has art on the walls, including a pair of Guido Manerba crushed shell paintings and a framed needlepoint of a prehistoric-looking bird. A George Nelson sofa covered in pink-purple-orange Jack Lenor Larsen fabric sits in one corner of the cosy living room.
Racks of clothes take up almost all of the floor space. There are eight in the living room, holding some 1,500 pieces that range in price from $125 to $15,000."I don't want to just have rich clients," Zabar said."To me that would be a bit of a bummer."
"There is nothing in here that hasn't been meticulously considered," she said."I don't see something, throw it on a hanger and up the price."
She plucked an Alexander McQueen strapless number from a rack."Feel that satin interior," she said, running the back of her hand across its cream-coloured bodice. She pointed to layers of gauzelike tulle and copper-hued sequins forming tree branches and birds."What you are looking at is not a dress but an idea," she said."It leaves me breathless."
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04/09/2017
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