A little before noon I arrive for work at Xtabay, a vintage clothing store in my neighborhood, and go to the bar next door to get the key. My main source of income has dried up for an unknown number of weeks, but by chance, Liz, Xtabay’s proprietress, needed someone to work weekends. I lug the sale rack out to front of the store, put out the sandwich board, light a few scented candles, and cue up the Brazilian music.
The first customers of the day are a high school girl and her father who drove in from a farming community west of town to find a dress for the girl’s homecoming dance. She looks about fifteen, wears jeans, a fleece hoodie, and glasses, and has her hair pulled back severely. No makeup. When I ask her what sort of dress she has in mind, she’s vague. “Oh, something fun. You know, semi-formal. Maybe something bright.” She flips through the racks while her father waits patiently by the door. I see her fingering silk, décolleté cocktail dresses, trying on the idea of womanhood. I think she’d be happy with the lilies and musk of Narciso Rodriguez.
A couple of housewives from the West Hills, slumming it on the eastside, park their BMW SUV rigged with baby seats out front and wander in. Lanvin Rumeur and YSL Paris (has loved it from college) are my guesses. Rumeur models a gorgeous 1950s cotton batiste tiered dress with a matching ruffled shawl. She complains that she’s bloated, has been on vacation and eaten too much, etc., but the dress fits like it was made for her, giving her a gorgeous waist. She hems and haws and finally puts the dress on hold, saying that her husband wouldn’t want her to spend the money, although I have a hunch that her highlights cost three times as much as the dress. She never comes back for it.
A little while later two loose dogs run into the store, chasing each other, tongues flapping, and I yell and point to the door. They run out and disappear up the street.
A couple comes in the store, he with pink hair and she with blue hair. She’s a little bigger than he is and voluptuous, and she tries on an armload of cocktail dresses. She models each dress for her boyfriend (the blue chiffon number looks great with her hair), and when she likes a dress she dances around in front of the mirror and shimmies toward her boyfriend. They seem really happy to be together. I have a hunch she’s a stripper, and that hunch strengthens when she has change for her boyfriend’s hundred-dollar bill when he buys her a 1940s black eyelet dress. I think she probably wears Angel, but I’d love to smell her in The Different Company Rose Poivrée. I’m guessing that her boyfriend would like a bottle of Hai Karate because it would crack him up. They come in the next day to buy a lipstick pink charmeuse dress, and he pays for this one, too, with another hundred-dollar bill.
While I’m fiddling with the music (yes! the BeeGees!), my lunch arrives from the bar next door. The brunette, tattooed waitress who drops it off is wearing a 1970s royal blue dress that she bought here the day before, and it makes her skin glow. She’d be divine in Patou Joy.
Late in the day, a small woman with vivid blue eyes cruises in. Within ten minutes she has pulled the five best things in the store to take with her in the dressing room. She has impeccable taste. She’s the ex-girlfriend of a famous rocker (you’d know him) and the wife of a nearly-as-famous writer (you’d probably know him, too). I pretend not to know her so I can appear extra cool. She recognizes me right away and is very gracious. She buys a sailor-styled blazer with gold buttons and little anchors on the lapels. I think of her as wearing Penhaligon’s Bluebell, because I heard that Kate Moss wears it, but she’d be great in a piercing green chypre that dries to skin, like Carven Ma Griffe.
After selling a gold sequined cocktail dress and a wool knit skirt to two women who’d had a few beers next door, I drag the sale rack in again, blow out the candles, and lock up the store. I’m bushed. It’s time to go home to a quiet evening and a few drops of comfort. No, I don’t mean a glass of wine. I was thinking Nuit de Noel.
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loved your piece!! i have got to get to that shop!
i feel like i know which “rocker” you've referred to– if it' s the same one i'm thinking of, i tend to see him in the most random places: zupan's, see's chocolates, even saks one time! i'm not sure what i picture him wearing– eau sauvage, perhaps? cheers to you!
Thank you! I'll be working there this afternoon-come on down and say hi.
Aren't you off to Paris soon? Have you settled on what perfume you'll buy?
Great article, Angela. The pink and blue haired couple made me smile. But you didn't mention any fragrance for the two dogs…
These dogs were ravaging plunderers, raiding the neighborhood looking for stray cats and dropped sandwiches. How about Yatagan?
hi, you-
yes, i leave for paris sunday. haven't packed a thing! def. going for bois de violette and will maybe check out narcisse noir– i have a sample of it and liked it a lot. i'm on a mission to find diorama (heard it's gorgeous) and hope to sniff the difference between edt and edp for chanel 19. can't wait!!
You'll have to tell me what Diorama is like! Columbina on Perfume Smellin' Things writes about it so well that I'm aching to know how it smells. You can get Narcisse Noir parfum on the internet for a really good price, btw, if it turns out you ike it.
Have a great trip!
i know– i've read columbina's reviews and drooled! can't wait. thanks for the narcisse noir tip! i'll contact you when i get back!
Really? I wonder which fragrance you would match me, or any of us, with if we visited the boutique, Angela?
Love the interior of the boutique and the dresses on the blog!
Hugs!
wonderful tour of your day – i felt i was right there. and i wish there were a shop as cool here! what were you wearing while you were selling?
What a fascinating place to work. I'd love to sit quietly in a corner and observe the patrons, not to mention browse the dresses. Sigh.
Wondering which perfume you'd image me wearing if I were a customer at your place.
I was bushed reading of all the activity. Sounds like a bunch of fun, though, and pairing people with your vision of their sig scent was creative. Since you live in the NW, guess for the rocker was the blond from Heart, married to CC,
I hope we can visit someday, and they YOU can tell ME what I should wear!
The shop really is pretty great. Most of my wardrobe has come from here. I tried to keep the perfume low key–last weekend I wore s-perfume 100% love one day and Goutal Des Lys the other.
Let me tell you, if I wrote fiction, this place would be a goldmine! I hope we do meet sometime.
Good guess! But no, try something in the Indie scene. (But wouldn't it be great to run into someone from Heart? I still play Barracuda if I really need a boost.)
you bought the goutal! i think i remember you trying it! i bought the AG neroli later on and looooove it!
I bet you're remembering Eau du Ciel. I've had the Des Lys for a while, thanks to a really generous friend who was passing through duty free one day. (Incidentally, she bought the Neroli, too, and gave it to her sister!)
Thanks for letting me spend the day with you! Much more interesting than mine, and I love vintage shopping. I'd have left with anything you might have had in the way of cocktail wear from the 40s – 60s… I really need to get a job as a hostess in a retro bar, I've got the clothes for it. But watch it with the “housewives slumming it” — I'm afraid that hits a little close to home
PS I'd have worn something that works with any lingering mildew smell but wouldn't attach itself to your clothes. Passage d'Enfer maybe.
BarraCUda!!!! Oh, yes. You just took me on a spin on the Himalaya with my best girlfriends at the state fair — around and around and around with our hair flying, laughing and screaming and singing along, ogling the tattooed guy running the ride.
Yes! That sounds like a lot of fun, as long as the ride came before the corndogs!
One of the beauties of the store, is that everything is drycleaned and them steamed and all smells fresh as a daisy. Plus, there are Pacifica candles burning here and there.
I know what you mean about the hostess wardrobe! I'm set up to travel with the Rat Pack, too. If I had the life that many of my clothes were made for, you'd be reading about me in the papers.
What a fun walk through your day! I want that sleeveless dress in the window, by the way. What should I wear with it?
Isn't that dress great? Xtabay got a load of Hawaiian and Pucci-esque dresses from a middle-aged woman with an obsession for Slash from Guns and Roses,a lurid past as a stripper, and a wicked orangey tan. The dresses all belonged to her mother, and I have to wonder what her mother's story was.
I think Pucci Vivara might be perfect (for the box, at least, I've never smelled the perfume!) or maybe Vent Vert. What do you think?
Oooohhh….Vent Vert! I have not sniffed that one yet but it's on my list. Wondering about all those stories behind the clothes…that would fill my days, if I were you. I'd never help anyone because I'd be too busy daydreaming.
The clothes all do seem to have stories. After spending a lot of time with vintage clothes, a rack at Nordstrom feels dead, almost.
Lovely article Angela, I really enjoy your reviews.
I too am dying to try Diorama and notice decants are available at The Perfumed Court…next on my list!!
As soon as I get through my current lean financial stretch, I'm clicking over for a sample of Diorama for sure! I do have a bottle of Diorling, and as soon as the weather cools a little, I'll be wearing it a lot more.