Fashion designer saab

AT THE COUTURE-CONSIGNING ADDRESS BOUTIQUE, WISE WOMEN SAVE MONEY AND RICH WOMEN SAVE CLOSET SPACE

IN EARLY 1963, WHEN SUZY PARKER was the model of choice and the accessory du jour had lately been the pillbox hat, Maureen Clavin looked around the ballroom of the Hillcrest Country Club, where she'd been a golf-playing member for years, beheld the ladies in their Galanos and Oleg Cassini gowns, and had her epiphany. Simply, it was that for ladies of a certain class, no social sin is more egregious or glaring than being seen twice in a particular outfit. This meant that virtually every woman she knew had closets stuffed with clothes she could easily afford to buy but could not afford to wear. Of course, castaway clothes could be bequeathed to the household help, but even the most democratically minded Brentwood matron would have to allow that giving the household help a Geoffrey Beene evening gown is essentially pointless.

And so Maureen Clavin gathered up the clothes of her friends: the gossamer Valentinos, the gold-chained Chanel bags, the Bill Blass cocktail ensembles, the boxy Courreges coats, and the splashy Pucci and Gernreich numbers that they adored but could no longer wear. She set out these pieces in a vacant commercial space in Manchester loaned to her by a dentist friend, placed prices on the clothes, arranged to split those prices with their former owners, and happened on the ideal business for a town whose inhabitants were early subscribers to a predilection which is, at its most inductive, that you are what you buy, a view currently expressed by Joan Rivers's question to stars attending the Oscars: "Who are you wearing?"

From the start, it was clearly an idea whose time had come, as became apparent to Clavin when her customers readily wrote their names and numbers in the guest book that her doubting friends assured her no one would sign. Anyone shopping for what were regarded, in those days, as "used clothes," they insisted, would prefer to remain anonymous. But the shoppers' world was becoming subject to a new egalitarianism that made it possible for secretaries and salesgirls to dress in copies of Jackie Kennedy's Oleg Cassini ensembles. And in a nation where the ultimate dream had long been to get something for nothing, lines were bound to form at a shop that offers the next best thing, which is to get something for far less than its nominal cost.

So began the Address Boutique, an enterprise now located in Santa Monica that is arguably the sole outpost in L.A. where celebrities are of no apparent interest. At the Address, designers are the stars and customers are unmoved by the fact that some of the clothes once belonged to Victoria Principal, Sally Field, Geena Davis, and Stefanie Powers, who donate a portion of their profits to charity and whose autographed photographs, displayed on the walls, go unnoticed.

IF THE ADDRESS WAS not the first resale store, it was certainly the first that mattered, and who better to guide its burgeoning into a Los Angeles institution than Maureen Clavin, a product of Hollywood High and UCLA who was raised on a street above the Chateau Marmont by parents who dressed up on weekends to go dancing at Ciro's and the Mocambo.

Clavin is a lover of beautiful clothes whose personal attire runs to loose pants and oversize jackets, a collector of rare items, like three strings of Galanos beads once owned by Rosalind Russell, but rarely wears them. Of uncertain age, she veers between warmly maternal and coolly detached, useful qualities in a business dependent on two disparate groups of people: the frugal souls and working women who yearn for fine garments but either cannot or will not invest huge sums of money in them and the profligate spenders with their 3,000-square-foot closets and clothes displayed on rotating carousels, whose eagerness to acquire new pieces is matched only by their eagerness to sell them. Clavin is both wily and empathic enough to soothe the nagging sense of shame that accrues to sellers who have what they don't want and to buyers who--before the Address came into being--wanted what they couldn't have.

It's a Friday at the Address, where Maureen Clavin's stated goal of creating a hospitable atmosphere manifests in bowls of candy, complimentary coffee, quarters for the parking meter, and attentive sales personnel carefully trained in the delicate skills of greeting customers and, as Clavin puts it, "listening to their wants and needs." At the noon hour the clients include several smartly turned-out women, among them a hypnotherapist wearing gray bootleg pants and a matching three-quarter-length jacket and a mother and daughter from Santa Barbara dressed in leather pants and Ralph Lauren tweed jackets, carrying Chanel bags.

On the racks many hundreds of garments, all crammed together, make it easy to overlook the lime-chiffon Dior worn on the runway of the Paris Spring 2000 show and now selling for $595; the previously unworn Oscar de la Renta beaded gown, complete with an original price tag that reads $4,400 and currently offered at $749; the sequined Dolce & Gabbana cummerbund, also unworn, with a Neiman Marcus price tag betraying the eye-bending original price of $6,520 and now selling for $349. There is also an abundance of Richard Tyler suits, Jil Sander dresses, and countless items bearing labels of the design houses Address shoppers especially favor: Armani, Gucci, Chanel, and Prada.

In the rear of the store, Clavin affixes price tags to a deep purple Richard Tyler evening ensemble and a bias-cut Donna Karan suit (prices, respectively, $250 and $295). Both sold originally within the last year and prove her contention that the store's stock is procured by 400 of the word's best buyers. The Tyler and Karan garments have just been delivered by the houseman of a Pasadena socialite who, like many women who sell to the Address, became familiar with the store through an advertisement shown regularly on morning TV. Featuring a young woman in designer outfits who poses before Clavin's fireplace and pirouettes through her backyard, the ad has a narrator intoning enticements like "Chanel, Donna Karan, Valentino ... These are the names that evoke belissimo ..." As it happens, the Pasadena socialite also sent along an Oscar de la Renta day dress and a Bill Blass cocktail gown that Clavin returned with the houseman. Resale revolves on maintaining standards, which embellishes Clavin's job description with the daunting task of inspecting garments owned by women unaccustomed to hearing the word no and telling them that their Lanvin suit, though lovely, is sullied by a stain or a moth hole or a snag where a diamond pin used to be.

The office phone rings. The caller, another woman who has seen the television ad, wants to bring in some items.

"What sort of things do you have?" Clavin asks.

"DKNY, St. John, and Escada."

"How recent are they?

"Some are real classics."

Maureen Clavin smiles. She's heard that answer enough to know that it signals that the garments are considerably older than those she's inclined to buy. But she's willing to take a look at the St. John and the Escada, and in the end, she takes two newer outfits, a navy-and-white St. John knit suit and a gold-satin Escada gown and sells them within days.

EVERYONE BENEFITS AT THE Address. For the celebrities unwilling to be seen in the same dress twice, for the deposed princess currently residing in a penthouse above Wilshire Boulevard, for the grand lady from the east who winters at the Hotel Bel-Air and sends her driver to the store with masses of clothes packed in quilted boxes, there's the satisfaction of knowing that nothing is wasted. Another bonus is the relief that comes of dispensing with fashion fancies and mistakes that otherwise dog your closet and leave you feeling both deprived and sated. Finally, there's the money that arrives shortly after the Address's books are reviewed on the 10th of each month. True, you get a fraction of what you paid initially, but still. "There isn't a person I buy from--and I'm talking about people living in mansions with guards--who doesn't love getting checks," Clavin says.

For the buyers, the dull sense of failure that accompanies the inability to purchase extravagant items at their original price is offset by the sense of superiority that comes with knowing that if they had owned this particular Balenciaga gown or little Chanel dress, they would never have sold it.