Feeling Hot and Bothered?

Feeling hot and bothered?  Why not make someone else feel all hot and bothered (and we're not talking about the incredible heat we have all been experiencing though temperatures will rise!) by donning a little vintage Herve Leger (ain't nothing like the real thing!)  in a crisp and refreshing navy blue with white piping.

Early 1990s Herve Leger blue dress with white piping. $1400

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Where did you get those Peepers?

Jeepers, creepers, where did you get those peepers? (That is my husband's voice)

10 Corso Como.  I fell madly, insanely in love with what I like to call a practical piece.  Lord knows where I will wear it but wear it I will. 

Here is a GREAT video.  So Berlin, so Lili Marlene, So Surrealist, So Schiaparelli.  It is all about the mood...

I'll be the one sneaking out the back door in my Stephen Jones surrealist turban...

An Important Collection of Tina Chow: Tanabata Necklace

When the stars align... 

Here is the baby I would love to call my own and tuck into bed at night.  This is the bedtime story I would tell it:

Once upon a time there was a weaver Princess and a herder Prince who lived in the heavens.  They met,  fell in love and soon forgot all about their responsibilites.  The princess ceased weaving and the prince let his herd wander off.   The King became angry and banished them to opposite ends of the Milky Way.  He allowed them to meet just once a year on the Tanabata, the seventh day of the seventh month.  (I guess this is what they mean by star crossed lovers.)  

Tina Chow's spectacular Tanabata necklace consists of twenty two unique rock crystal pebbles, each wrapped in thin strips of bamboo.  

Here is a photo of Tina surrounded by similar pieces:

An Important Collection of Tina Chow: Saturn Rock Crystal Cuff

A dream of beauty and artistry continues...

Tina Chow's Saturn bracelet is a substantial piece cut from a single piece of rock crystal and wrapped in thin strips of bamboo.  

Everyone has been going crazy for the cuffs and for obvious reason.  They are extraordinary and iconic.  In so many photographs of Tina Chow, we see her wearing her Kyoto bracelet with either a wide crystal cuff or a piece similar to this Saturn bracelet.  

1988 David Seidner photo

Tomorrow comes perhaps my favorite piece.  Well, really I love them all...

An Important Collection of Tina Chow: Amethyst Oiso Pendant

The dream continues ... Day two of posting our amazing Tina Chow collection.  I wish every day could be like this!

This is a piece that radiates happiness.  It is a beautiful heart shaped amethyst lightly wrapped in thin strips of bamboo.  

Amethyst is a healing and soothing stone.  Tina Chow had said that she wanted her pieces "to zap people with good energy".

What is so remarkable about her jewelry is that they are beautiful and meaningful on so many levels: the pieces are very refined, they are perfect but not ordinarily perfect, they are beautifully crafted but somehow natural at the same time and they have a deeper meaning.  They are more then meets the eye which is exactly what Tina Chow was.

More to come...

An Important Collection of Tina Chow Jewelry

This is the post for the blog that I have dreamt of writing and somehow it seems the dream has come true.  It also seems quite right that as I was looking at Fortuny dresses here in Venice similar to the pieces that Tina Chow collected and wore, I was purchasing an important collection of her jewelry.  

I am indebted to the knowledge of the owner of these pieces for helping me to understand her jewelry  with clarity, to learn the names of the pieces and for entrusting me with a part of Tina Chow's legacy that she has cared for since she originally bought the pieces.  I am also indebted to her for having the eye of a collector and for having chosen the best.  

I am still all goosebumply as I write this!

I have always thought that women of true style, those who go their own way, do what they want and then inspire other women and designers by the way they dress are not just simply women of fashion but women of thought and creativity.  Millicent Rogers ,one of the great style icons, not only dressed  well (to say the least!), she also created jewelry and collected indigenous art and left a museum of Native American Art in Taos, New Mexico.  Chessy Rayner another great woman of style was also a great interior designer.  

Tina Chow is still influencing designers and their collections.  Style.Com has written of her as a Style and a Beauty Icon.   But she is not defined by her collection of couture alone.  She is also known for the small collection of jewelry that she created.  Carine Roitfeld in  a recent Paris Vogue did a cover and editorial inspired by Tina and her jewelry.

Tina Chow was a perfectionist in creating her jewelry.  Every aspect of it.  From the silk cords to the boxes she put her pieces in.  I think because of the organic quality of her jewelry and the way that it feels when you wear a piece of hers - it is a sensuous experience, there is a feeling of beauty and serenity.  She used crystals which were intended to be "personal amulets and power pieces."  I know that when I wear my Tina Chow pieces I feel calm and somehow reassured.


The most iconic piece and the piece most associated with Tina Chow is the KYOTO bracelet.  This is the piece that she was most often photographed in.  Here is one of my favorite photos of Tina Chow.  

Her lips are signature red, the rest of her face sis almost bare, she has on a single crystal earring over a bare shoulder, a crystal ring and cuff and her Kyoto bracelet.  China Chow was recently photographed for The New York Times wearing her mother's Kyoto bracelet with amethyst pebbles inside it.


I am beyond thrilled to have a Tina Chow Kyoto bracelet which has never been available before with seven rose quartz pebbles inside it.  The pebbles make a very beautiful sound rustling inside the woven bamboo.  

The bracelet is signed T.C. and Shochikudo.  

Shouchikudou Kosuge was a Master craftsman of bamboo.  He started making pieces in bamboo at seven years old studying with his father.  His basket work is highly prized in Japan.  Besides crafting the bamboo for Tina Chow pieces, he also did a fantastic bamboo bodice for Issey Miyake in 1982.  This is amazing and I wonder if only one was produced?

Tina grew up surrounded by her parent's collection of bamboo pieces.  The Lutz Bamboo Collection  is  actually at the Denver Art Museum.  I think it is lovely that the art that must have surrounded Tina as she grew up was incorporated into her jewelry designs in a completely unique way.


Our Kyoto bracelet is bamboo with rose quartz pebbles.  Every aspect of the jewelry Tina Chow created was thoughtful and purposeful.  Rose quartz, besides being the stone that represents love, is healing, helping in matters of illness, fear and love.  This is what I meant when I wrote earlier that when you wear her jewelry, you feel reassured.  It is not just how good the piece physically feels in your hand or on your body but what it represents.

I will be adding more pieces this week!

Tina Chow Rose Quartz and Bamboo Kyoto Bracelet.

Venice is for Lovers

I am in Italy for work and for holiday (which means special pieces coming to the RARE blog soon!! Exciting!  I will be cruel and not even give you a hint what fabulous things are coming but Fabulous they are!!) but in the meantime,

Venice is for lovers of...

a bellini at Cipriani (Hemingway drank there and that in itself is enough for me)

a heavenly paparedelle con radicchio at Vini di Arturo on Calle dei Assasini (Joel Silver actually flew the staff from Vini da Arturo to LA because the food is so amazing and by the smiling faces of Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, Tom Ford (well, Tom Ford was more smoldering then smiling) and Tobey Macquire everyone looked as happy we were after lunch)

a raffia covered cabana on the Lido in front of the elegantly faded Hotel des Bains where Visconti's 'Death in Venice' was filmed.  The Hotel is being restored and energized by The Four Seasons and will have luxury apartments with hotel amenities.

reading Peggy Guggenheim's wonderfully transportive autobiography in above mentioned cabana 

Fortuny and a beautiful afternoon spent inside a dark Palazzo with thunder outside and Fortuny Delphos dresses inside, Andy Warhols's "Diamond Dust Shoes" painting and an aluminum Fontana slash painting.

coming upon a 1987 American Grand National (okay, I had to look that up, I knew it was an American car but I had never even heard of a Grand National) silkscreened by Richard Prince with images of women in front of the Pinault leased Palazzo Grassi.  By the way,  the guards at Palazzo Grassi and the newly opened Punta della Dogana Francois Pinault Foundation are all well dressed and quite good looking.  Coincidence?  Hmmm...

and finally wouldn't we all love to arrive in Venice looking this great?

Shocking! by YSL versus Madame by Chanel...

Two sides of the 1980s and two types of women.  One walks into the room and everyone looks at her confidently sauntering in wearing a shocking pink heavy silk blouse by Yves Saint Laurent.  She is voluptous (I am happy to say that this is actually not a teeny tiny 2! but a very wearable 8) and has on  a shocking pink YSL lipstick to match her blouse on her otherwise bare face.  She goes to the bar and orders a martini.  She is soon surrounded by admirers.

 1980s Yves Saint Laurent shocking pink blouse.. Modern size 8.  $450

Our other woman walks into the same room and everyone looks up at her too.  She is wearing a Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel blouse demurely buttoned to the throat with a neat attached scarf looped gently.  Her gilt buttons look vaguely astrological.  Her blouse is tucked into a slim leather skirt and she has on the highest, wickedest Christian Louboutins.  She goes to her table to meet her lover?  Her husband?  Her friend?

1980s cream Chanel blouse. Modern size 6/8. $550

Maybe our two women have more in common then we first thought... 

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Breaking Fashion News! Chanel Dress Nearly Suffocates Diane Kruger!

UPDATE: Calling all the amateur Hercule Poirot  (not to be confused with Paul Poiret!)  Is this the dress that Diane Kruger is referring to in the July issue of Allure?


Thank you to a more astute then I RARE blog reader who noticed that this dress is Dior haute couture and not Chanel.  Thank you!  But the mystery remains.  I wonder which dress and by whom she wore that nearly suffocated her? 

The beautiful Diane Kruger wore this beautiful Dior haute couture dress to the Venice Film Festival two years ago.

In the July issue of Allure she speaks about wearing it:

"I wore an haute couture gown to the Venice Film Festival, and it had a full-on corset—it was gorgeous, but it was a runway piece, and it hadn't been made for life. The bodice didn't have one of those openings at the bottom. I nearly fainted because it was so tight, and I had to go to the bathroom so badly, but it would have taken an hour to get out of that dress. But! It was soooo gorgeous!"

All I can say is "been there, done that!"

Hello Sailor!

The annual Fleet Week has come and gone in New York but the sailor has left us feeling sartorially enamored of the striped shirt, a vintage pair of high waisted Yves Saint Laurent sailor pant with gold rope buttons on the side (coming soon to the RARE blog) and an amazing Yves Saint Laurent rope necklace from the 1970s.  

It is quintessentially chic French marnière which has been always been an inspiration of Saint Laurent. This is vintage what comes around goes around: it was originally purchased at Didier Ludot in Paris as a gift to our client.

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Puff the Magic Dragon

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's current exhibit American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity there is a spectacular gown by the great Hollywood costume designer, Travis Banton.  The gown in a lustrous silk satin was designed for the Chinese-American actress, Anna May Wong, to wear in the film "Limehouse Blues".  A dragon in gold and silver sequins shimmers and slithers  down the dress coiling around the back of the dress and the train.  

 Travis Banton Dragon Gown from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dragons are a recurring motif in fashion.  Hervé van der Straeten  was originally a jewelry designer for Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix.  He is really more of a sculptor and an artist, creating jewelry, mirrors, lighting and furniture often in bronze.  We are happy to offer a wonderful pair of Hervé van der Straeten dragon earrings.  They are beautifully sculpted and handmade.  Perfect for when you are having an Anna May Wong dragon moment!

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You Can Leave Your Socks On!

One of the sexiest stripteases in the movies is Kim Basinger taking it all off to Joe Cocker's You can leave your hat on in '9 1/2 Weeks'.  Now, I figure if Joe or Mickey had seen Kim Basinger in this Norma Kamali swimsuit ensemble, they would have said, you can leave your socks on.   Hmmm, isn't that what our former Govenor, Elliot Spitzer, did?  

This is a pin up girl's dream outfit.   A forties inspired leopard print bikini with a high waisted bottom that is gathered in the front and tight across the derriere.  And most, how shall I say, curious?  intriguing?  amusing? of all it comes with socks.  Yes, you read that right, socks!  Whether you leave your socks on, is all up to you!

1970s Norma Kamali leopard print forties inspired bikini and socks! 

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Video Killed the Radio Star

A 1970s Norma Kamali cropped, form fitting jumpsuit with sharp shoulders and gigot sleeves calls out to the girl with big dreams and a lot of ambition.  

She takes dance classes during the day and writes songs at night.  She already knows that she is going to be a star.   She knows that video is a metaphor for outrageous glamour.  

Here is The Buggles 1979 Video killed the Radio Star (Too funny!  I had to include it! Love the sunglasses!)

1970s black and white striped Norma Kamali jumpsuit.  $650
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Bag It, Borrow It, Steal It and Read It: Avelle!

We all remember the scene in Sex and the City when Carries's new assistant previously unemployed and living with three room mates, walks in with the new Louis Vuitton patchwork denim bowling bag.  Carrie wondered how she could afford it.  So did I as a matter of fact.  It turned out to be a rental from Bag, Borrow or Steal.  Genius!

RARE vintage is all about the timeless, the collectible and the wearable but in every timeless wardrobe there must be the new, the trendy, the coveted.  There must be a mix of old and new.  There must be - whoa, I felt like up I was up on a podium campaigning for change there for moment.  Calm down girl!

There is the investment piece and there is the I can not make up my mind piece.  I actually change my handbag nearly every day because it is a myth that there is one bag who can do it all.  As much as I love my vintage Chanel, I love the new Alexander Wang studded Coco bag too.  I also love, well, I could on and on for days...  So I was thrilled to be asked a bi monthly column for the new Bag, Borrow or Steal: Avelle.  I will be writing about the history of trends so it is basically like the inspiration board designers do each season.  Brigitte Bardot in St. Tropez in shorts?  A trend again.  And again.  Shorts are everywhere and will be everywhere next season too.  Check out the cute French gamine look from Jason Wu's resort 2011 collection.  Read on at Avelle!

Twice as Nice

I have always been a big advocate of wearing something you love more then once.  Why not?  Damn it, if Marlene Dietrich can wear a dress multiple times with different accessories so can we.  And so can Taylor Swift.   Here she is in the silver fringe Oleg Cassini dress that she found at RARE vintage and had worn to the Justin Timberlake Friends Concert and now again in the new Sony Cyber-Shot Camera Commercial.  How cool is that?!

Peek-a-Boo Koos

You see.  This is what I meant about the multiple personalities of RARE vintage.  One day we are the Mudd Club kid from the 1980s, the next day we are the elegant sophisticate in Paris.  Today we are Punk Princess listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees singing Peek-a-boo while wearing  a peek-a-boo Koos Van Den Akker from 1977.  (I know, Siouxsie and the Banshees were a bit later but the title just worked so well with the dress.)

This is Koos patchwork gone punk.  It is an amazing punk inspired dress that was made for an event in New York for our client.  Her date also wore Koos Van Den Akker, a tuxedo with safety pins but unfortunately we do have that ensemble.  The little rips are intentional (very Balmain this season isn't it?).  The bodice is covered in a cut out lace attached to a synthetic jersey by artfully arranged safety pins.  

It is a quite daring dress and my client swears that she wore it with nary a thing underneath and as she has a magnificent bosom, I am sure that she did! 

1977 patchwork punk lace Koos Van Den Akker Gown.  Size 4/6.
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