LOS ANGELES – “Slice the lox? Please. I was the daughter of caviar. “
Rachel Zabar, who looks summery in a Valentino day dress printed with stars, was on a loveseat in her living room here. I had already knocked Diet Coke upside down on his Italian coffee table and asked a lot of questions about his successful career as a vintage sewing dealer. Now, just to be extremely irritating, I was digging into her childhood memories, with a special focus on Zabar, her family’s famous food store in New York.
“Jewish delights, fashion, pouring soda – you don’t know much about these things, do you?” Ms. Zabar said. She laughed, threw her navy blue Newbark moccasins and took a cross position on the sofa. “No problem! I’ll teach you everything. Let’s start at the beginning.”
Yes, leave us. Ms. Zabar, 45, worked at Zabar as a teenager (in the bread department before the caviar counter) and then spent almost two decades, at the occasional irritation of Papa Zabar, passing from a potential career to another – photography, documentary films, screenplays. In 2010, she sold furniture in a flea market.
Perhaps it was finally time to make a living at Zabar, as his older sister and younger brother had successfully done?
But Ms. Zabar decided to try again, re-establishing herself as a reseller of high-end vintage clothing and accessories. Since then, it has gained considerable traction in a difficult market, selling pieces to celebrities (Tracee Ellis Ross, Rihanna), private collectors (Aureta Thomollari), institutions (Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum in Tokyo) and archivists in fashion houses (Saint Laurent, Gucci). In June, Tory Burch purchased $ 30,000 worth of items in one visit.
Anthony Barzilay Freund, the editor of Introspective, the magazine for 1stdibs, the online marketplace where Ms. Zabar is one of 250 fashion retailers, praised the quality of her stock. “She seems to have the gift of knowing what’s going to change,” said Freund. “This young and trendy atmosphere of L.A. – she fully understood it.”
This world has its characters, to say the least. Luxury vintage began to sizzle in the 1990s, when stars like Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman found themselves on red carpets in museum-quality designer showstoppers Lily and Cie, a Beverly Hills boutique owned by Rita Watnick. (Mrs. Watnick, known for her terrifying candor as much as for her taste, still reigns supreme.)
In 1997, with the arrival of Another high-end boutique, Los Angeles, had become a vintage epicenter for decades. (The flamboyant co-owner of Decades, Cameron Silver, presents himself as the “king of vintage”.)
In the early 2000s, the vintage spread, fueled by nostalgia from the pre-2000 era and the popularity of eBay. Julia Roberts wore a vintage Valentino in black and white to win her Oscar in 2001. Rachel Zoe, often draped in Chloé and Yves Saint Laurent, became a star of reality TV, then a designer shamelessly drawing the past. What Goes Around Comes Around, a New York boutique, has become a chain, spanning Miami Beach and Los Angeles.
By the time Ms. Zabar took her vintage business seriously about five years ago, there was very little room for a newcomer. The retail landscape in Los Angeles was crowded with competitors (Resurrection, the Way We Wore) and was already showing signs of an Internet slowdown.
Certain areas of the market (vintage Pucci clothing) were sold out. Vintage was becoming less and less of a force on the red carpet, in part because fashion houses became more willing to make deals with actresses, even C-listers.
But Ms. Zabar persisted.
“It’s a small world with sharp elbows, of course, and I’ve learned business lessons the hard way – who to trust, how to price, what to focus on,” she said. “The great revolution of the wrap skirt certainly did not go as I imagined.” She winced. “But I was determined. I had to prove to myself that I could stay with Something. “
Ms. Zabar, who has two employees, works from her home, a 1953 Gregory Ain’s gem nestled in the hills near the Hollywood Bowl. She has art on the walls, including a pair of crushed shell paintings by Guido Manerba and a point of needle framed by a prehistoric-looking bird. A George Nelson sofa covered in pink-purple-orange Jack Lenor Larsen fabric is in a comfortable corner of the living room.
Clothes racks occupy almost all of the floor space. There are eight in the living room, containing approximately 1,500 pieces ranging in price from $ 125 to $ 15,000. “I don’t just want to have wealthy clients,” said Ms. Zabar. “To me it would be a little disappointing.”
Over there is black silk Madame Grès cocktail dress from the early 80s. (“This thing is bananas,” she said, showing me her matching sleeveless jumpsuit.) A 1992 Versace starfish print dress is hanging nearby.
“There is nothing here that has not been meticulously studied,” she said. “I don’t see something, throw it on a hanger and raise the price.”
She chased one of her two cats, the Bengals by the names of Leo-Wilbur and Taz, and picked up a strapless number Alexander McQueen from a shelf. “Feel that satin interior,” she says, running the back of her hand over her cream bodice. She pointed to layers of gauzelike tulle and copper glitter forming tree branches and birds. “What you are looking at is not a dress but an idea,” she said. “It takes my breath away.”
Full disclosure: I am a fashion philistine who tends to find people cooing about sewing as being absolutely unbearable. In fact, I feared that Ms. Zabar would be just that before I met her.
Shame on me. It was the antithesis of the fashionista’s stereotype: funny and relatable – sometimes neurotic and not very precarious, sometimes calm and confident. In other words, a real person. She has a contagious enthusiasm for her work. “You’re going to die when you see that,” she said at one point, disappearing in a hallway and returning with the 1960s. Frank Milch handbag with integrated work radio. “This is grandma’s first boombox! Isn’t that incredible?”
To say that Ms. Zabar resumed her career would be an understatement. She grew up a few blocks from Zabar’s, which is at the corner of 80th Street and Broadway. Her father Saul and uncle Stanley took over the store from their immigrant parents, who founded it in 1934. Ms. Zabar said her father insisted that her children work in the family business from an early age. “There was no argument,” said Ms. Zabar.
Saul Zabar, 89, remembers it a little differently.
“We let her make her own choices,” he said by phone. “The store was never part of her. We knew this from an early age. He added, “She was artistic. Even as a child, she had a natural talent for color and style. “
Whatever the situation, Ms. Zabar did not like working in the store as a teenager. “It was rebellion and liveliness,” she said. “I think I was also a little embarrassed by his immigrant mentality” the children will help. “I wanted to be free to pursue my own interests.”
One of his hobbies was fashion, especially vintage fashion.
“We had a family friend who was creative, and she used to take me to flea markets when I was 9 or 10,” said Ms. Zabar. “I started to carry the treasures I found. I’m talking about stripes and flowers and rows of pearls and a weird hat. If my mother told me that I couldn’t wear anything at school, there would be tantrums and screams. “(She attended Dalton.)
The family friend was Donna Karan, who then headed Anne Klein’s design team. Ms. Karan and the Zabars had neighboring vacation homes on Fire Island in the early 1980s.
After graduating in history from Brown University, Ms. Zabar worked for the fashion photographer Roxanne Lowit before joining an advertising company, then Shoelace Productions, Julia Roberts’ film development company based in New York. Ms. Zabar then decided to go to film school (New York University) but left without finishing her thesis because she had decided to make a documentary on her father. She moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to edit this film, but left it unfinished to study screenplay at the American Film Institute.
“I know her every time I change careers, and there have been a lot of moves – I got dizzy at one point,” said Ilene Chazanof, a decorative arts dealer from New York and a friend of the family. “I love her and she has developed a sophisticated eye. But get there – oof. “
Ms. Zabar said that she just hadn’t found her niche.
“For some reason, I avoided fashion,” she said. “Maybe because it was so obvious?” Instead, I just let my curiosity guide me. “
She decided to study screenwriting, for example, after taking an interest in television pilots. “But very quickly, the writer’s life did not feel good,” she said. “All this loneliness and time alone in your head was not for me. I got up one day and saw my computer across the room, and I thought,” If I take one more step towards this thing, my soul will die. ” (Tell me about it, sister.)
But she loved California.
“For me, having grown up in New York, California is so” other “- a completely different existence, where everything is strange and awesome at the same time,” she said. “Time. Driving. These little time capsules totally intact like Pink hot dog stand. “
It was in the California flea markets, where she started selling vintage clothing and accessories (after giving up on furniture), that Ms. Zabar said that her future had finally become a goal.
“I don’t do them anymore, but selling at flea markets has taught me a lot,” she said. “This is where I learned to market.”
Wait. Hadn’t she got it all from Zabar?
She howled with laughter. “My father is do not known for its merchandising, “she said. “It’s a chaotic mess in there! But I will say that working for my father taught me customer service. The expertise and specificity necessary to connect with customers and keep them.”
After a one-minute break, she added, “I guess that way, I closed the loop.”
