"HALSTON made this for Ali McGraw for the premiere of 'Love Story,' and she gave it to me a very long time ago. It's so cool, right?"
Cool is an understatement. Nevermind its history. The eggplant-colored coat that Natasha Gregson Wagner has just extracted from her walk-in closet is sublime. The tie-dye rings splashed on the silk velvet predate Prada's take by more than a lifetime. Yet the pristine coat couldn't look more contemporary.
It is an overdue spring cleaning at the Mulholland Drive home of the tiny actress, a regular on the USA network's "The 4400." Directing the closet operation is Christos Garkinos, who co-owns the designer resale store DecadesTwo with vintage guru Cameron Silver. Garkinos is making one of his regular house calls to shop the bulging wardrobes of dedicated clotheshorses, some famous, many just well-off.
And, as is usually the case during these unglamorous chores, forgotten gems are as bountiful as the "what was I thinking?" lumps of coal taking up valuable room, even in a closet as long and spacious as this one. It turns out unearthing a Halston now couldn't be better timing.
"Everything about it is right for fall -- the color, the velvet," Garkinos says. "Even the fact that it's Halston, particularly important now as the house edges for yet another comeback.
Garkinos and Silver don't always take what they want. If they recognize a client is not ready to let go of a piece, and it still works in her life, they will help her reimagine an entirely new way of wearing it. "Sometimes it just takes another perspective to realize what you have," says Garkinos, who instructs Wagner to keep the Halston. Case made, again, when he advises her to ditch an emerald green Prada dress.
"You're more mod. But this is very 'Maude,' " he says. "Get rid of it." So, too, the chocolate brown tweed Chanel bag she deems "too lady" and hasn't used more than twice. He quickly pulls a set of bronze ballerina flats from the shelf and points to her stack of jeans. In the end, the bag stays.
Garkinos and Silver have made shopping closets an art form. So much so, they've just expanded Decades Two, which specialized in better designer clothes and accessories from the last decade. The Melrose Avenue shop doubled its size to 3,000 square feet last month. Upstairs, Decades, which Silver opened 10 years ago this fall, sells couture vintage, mostly from the 1960s through 1980s, to a worldwide clientele.
