Affordable Fashions Need Little Translation
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
He Sook Kooritzky's work as a real estate agent often takes her to Annandale. Now the Vienna resident and Korean immigrant has another reason to head there. A recently opened, high-end consignment shop on Little River Turnpike has sold her on a new concept: selling the designer clothes that cluttered her closet and buying those cast off by others.
"Whenever I'm in Annandale, I stop by," said Kooritzky, 66, who recently scored Roberto Cavalli blouses for herself and Christian Dior sunglasses for her daughter at the shop, called Grace & Kelli. "I am a very good customer."
Annandale, the original hub of the Washington region's large Korean population, is home to plenty of restaurants and shops that have introduced residents to Korean foods and products. Now, in a nondescript strip mall, a trio of Korean Americans has opened Grace & Kelli with hopes of hooking their community on resale by offering the designer clothing they say Koreans covet.
Several such stores exist in the region, but they are unfamiliar to many Korean immigrants, particularly those of the first generation, said co-owner Gina Kim.
"Koreans are big consumers. They're into name brands, luxury brands," said Kim, 40, an Annandale lawyer who emigrated from Korea at age 11, was a self-described "consignment queen" in college and now finds herself explaining the concept to Korean women of her mother's era. "A lot of them think I made up this whole idea."
The store, which opened in February, feels more boutique than thrift shop. Its walls are painted fuchsia, its floors are polished wood and its racks hold beaded and silken clothing -- all women's, except for a few children's items and men's neckties -- whose labels read Prada, Chanel and St. John, the classic line marketed by Angelina Jolie.
Prices are a fraction of those at the department stores from which most of the garments originated. Not that they're cheap. One recent afternoon, a bronze, patent leather Louis Vuitton handbag glimmered on a lighted wall shelf. Its price: $1,300, probably two-thirds the original cost. Mid-range brands, such as Ann Taylor, were priced as low as $20.
Kim said the idea has caught on more quickly than she expected. Sure, some skeptical Korean customers have asked whether they can enter through the back door or shop after hours because they feel ashamed to be shopping for used clothing. But the store's inventory has grown from 200 pieces to more than 1,000. And Kim, who funded the project with $120,000, said she has broken even each month since opening.
Designer purses have been flying off the shelves especially fast, she said: "I can't keep a Chanel handbag." The resale industry is growing about 5 percent each year, and sales are rising as the economy slows, according to the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. But Kim and her co-owners -- her mother, Sue Kim, and sister-in-law, Hannah Yun -- said they started Grace & Kelli more for fun than profit.
The idea grew out of Gina Kim's monthly gatherings with a group of close girlfriends, avid shoppers who lamented that the spoils of their habit, particularly those designer handbags, were taking over their closets. Someone suggested they rent a hotel ballroom to sell their surplus and donate 20 percent of the profit to charity.
That never happened, but it got Kim thinking. She owned vacant retail space at Little River Turnpike and Annandale Road. Why not try a store? She figured it could be a place for Koreans and non-Koreans to shop together, raise some money for charity and tighten the bonds between herself, her mother and Yun.
"It became a little pet project," Kim said. Grace & Kelli, so named in a nod to glamour icon Grace Kelly, started with garments collected at a "consignment party" thrown for friends and also from Vienna resident Evelyn Stephens, an acquaintance who runs an online business called Runway Clothes Consignment. Advertisements in Korean-language newspapers helped draw initial crowds, Kim said, as did a 7 1/2 -minute consignment tutorial given by Yun on a local Korean-language radio station. Yun, an insurance agent, had run a recycling campaign for the YWCA in Korea, so she explained consignment in "save-the-environment" terms. At Grace & Kelli, consigners usually reap about 50 to 70 percent of the price the garment or bag sells for, Kim said.
The owners plan to donate 10 percent of their eventual profit to the Korean Community Service Center in Annandale and a second charity that is not tied to the Korean community. This month, the store will also give two $1,000 scholarships to Annandale High School graduates who show a commitment to volunteering, Kim said. The store has become something of a ladies' gathering spot. On a recent day, Kim, her mother, Stephens, Yun and clerk Jennifer Yun gathered around a sleek glass table to the rear of the store to nibble Korean sweets and sip coffee. It's a common sight, Kim said.
"It's just like a local hangout," said Sue Yi, a Rockville pharmacist and Grace & Kelli regular. "You see other people come in and try things on, and you get motivated to go and browse yourself. It's fun, and the whole idea is just really being received well." Not least by Kim's mother, Sue Kim, whom Kim described as a "typical first-generation Korean woman." She wears jeans and sneakers to her day job as owner of a food court restaurant in downtown Washington. But after work, Kim said, "it's only Chanel."
Now on four afternoons a week, Sue Kim, 65, goes from her job at the food court to Grace & Kelli, where she works as a clerk. And she's a client: She has picked up Versace sneakers and Chanel shoes at the shop.
"I think it's no more," she said of buying full-price clothing. "I'm so happy." Kim said she hopes to persuade buses carrying Korean tourists to stop by the store. She figures the visitors -- who often shop for designer goods in the United States, where they're cheaper than in Korea -- will snatch up inventory.
For now, though, she and her co-owners said they are happy to see the store attract a mix of Korean Americans and people they refer to as from "the mainstream community." Tina Swallow, 44, is one of the second group. She moved to Annandale from Rhode Island recently, started a career in technology and figured it was time to edit her wardrobe. She said she dropped off about 100 garments at Grace & Kelli in February and felt like she'd "lost 20 pounds." Swallow, who retired from a globetrotting career in the Navy, said she felt even better when the store sent her a $350 check a few weeks later.
Among the items Swallow let go was a red St. John suit she had worn each Christmas for the past 10 years in various corners of the world. "I wore it at Christmas in the Middle East and in Japan," Swallow said. "Hopefully somebody else will enjoy it as much as I did."
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