Three leading ladies of fashion — Linda Fargo, Michelle Stein and Ranjana Khan — have been scouring their closets in preparation for their “Style Sisters” resale event involving much of their own ready-to-wear.
“It’s a cleanse,” said Fargo, Bergdorf Goodman‘s senior vice president, fashion and store presentation director. “Everything I’m selling still fits. I still like most of it. They were good, lasting selections. I do want to both live with less and make room for newness. But it is hard to let go.”
That’s particularly true of the black and white Jonathan Simkhai lace dress she wore to a Central Park Conservancy luncheon and her gold, one-shoulder Alber Elbaz Lanvin dress. “I wore that on a memorable holiday date night,” Fargo said.
“The three of us organically priced things very accessibly,” Fargo added. “We have each lived and continue to live lives in fashion or fashion adjacent, and have the closets to show for it. I’m sure there’s many of us vets of the biz who know the scenario. I would encourage them to form small collectives and do similar ‘give back’ sales. It’s a win-win.”
Asked if the three women would make some money from the Style Sisters event, Fargo replied, “Fashion doesn’t generally increase in value unless it’s highly collectible, museum specimen pieces, so we don’t ‘make money’ per se, but we make enough to buy a few new things, or plant this spring’s gardens, and we make someone else feel they got a great value and a great edit.”
The range of designer labels being sold will include Jean Paul Gaultier, Proenza Schouler, Prabal Gurung, Balenciaga, Celine, Lanvin, Romeo Gigli, Altuzarra, Yves Saint Laurent, Theory and Andrew Gn. The sale is being held April 26 to 28 at 322 8th Avenue, Suite 901, in Manhattan.
“We each bring a different zone of fashion to the mix,” Fargo said, noting that Stein, the former president of Aeffe USA, has a lot of Gaultier, Moschino and Alberta Ferretti pieces she’s selling, and that Khan, a designer herself, has “unique and colorful novelty pieces often embellished in India, plus her Halstons . . . My collection has a very wide range reflecting my wide taste range but you can expect leopard, shine, LBDs [little black dresses], classics and ‘over the tops,’ all from many known designers. As you know, my taste is wide — classics to showstoppers.
“This is a creative and personal way to recirculate your collections, versus handing off to consignment or The Real Real,” Fargo said. “We actually run the sale ourselves, and meet and talk fashion with everyone. It’s a very dynamic exchange — swapping stories about when we wore something and seeing your things on someone else, they literally take on a new life right before your eyes.”
This will be the third Style Sisters event. “We’ve had lines down the block as an indication of how much people value these circularity events,” Fargo said. “We’ve had to limit the amount of time people spent to allow others to come in.” Fargo said the sale has nothing to do with Bergdorf’s. “Except as you might expect, most of my closet has been built on a Bergdorf wardrobe.”
There is a downside to a sale event like this, Fargo added. “It’s seeing your things looking great on someone else, and wanting them all over again.”
