Alligators, Old Mink and New Money: One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing

by Alison Houtte, Melissa Houtte

Overview

"Alligators, Old Mink and New Money is a celebration of the clothes that capture our memories and imaginations; that leave their indelible stamp on each of our lives. Narrated by Allison Houtte, a former fashion model who runs the beloved Brooklyn, New York, boutique Hooti Couture - a shop that Giana Bellafante of the New York Times has toasted as a premier spot for vintage finds - this book is not only the story of one woman's life in fashion, but also a vintage-shopper's guide that helps readers embrace the idea of seeking out fashion finds from past decades to accent their current wardrobe." "Marrying two of women's favorite pastimes - shopping and reading - Alison Houtte uses the merchandise she has bought, worn, or sold as a prism through which she examines everything from the labels we wear to the labels we put on our surroundings. Whether talking about her grandmother's navy blue slip or a creamy white forties alligator purse, Houtte knows that every article of vintage clothing has a story behind it. She uses these items as a springboard to explore such universal topics as relationships, self-image, the bond between mothers and daughters, and that elusive thing called style." Whether you're a flea market veteran who savors the thrill of the hunt, a couture shopper with a Vogue budget, or are simply drawn to the de rigeur world of vintage, Alligators, Old Mink and New Money offers a shopping adventure - through auctions, estate sales, flea markets, and clothing racks all over the world - to be savored, and inspired by!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060786670
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/22/2005
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Alison Houtte is the owner of Hooti Couture, a vintage clothing and accessories boutique in Brooklyn, New York. Before opening her own business, she worked for more than ten years as a fashion model in Paris and New York, and has appeared in both French and American Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan and French Marie Claire. Her Brooklyn home is filled with assorted vintage furnishings and clothing.

Melissa Houtte is an award-winning journalist whose career as a writer and editor has spanned newspapers, magazines, books, and the internet. She is the coauthor of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Healthiness and lives in San Francisco, California. Her favorite West Coast vintage haunts include the Salvation Army and the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena.

Read an Excerpt

Alligators, Old Mink and New Money

One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing

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By Alison Houtte

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2005 Alison Houtte
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060786671

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Chapter One

Mothers and Daughters

Passing Down the Thrift Gene

Back in the mid-nineties, while I was visiting my parents in Miami, I was desperate for something to wear to lunch at the newly opened Delano Hotel, the place to be seen on South Beach at that moment. I was meeting an old girlfriend from my modeling days, a woman who now moves with a crowd in Manhattan a few notches above my social circle. I wanted to look good, and I wanted to be cool, literally. It was a ninety-eight-degree day.

Tucked in a drawer in my mother's dresser, which was jammed to overflowing with odd remnants like a monogrammed linen handkerchief and a single baby's shoe, I found an old navy blue slip whose fabric felt like rose petals in my hands. I knew that my mother had tucked away hundreds of such items throughout our house -- from her youth, from the childhoods of my four sisters and brother and me -- but I didn't know that this had belonged to my grandmother, Mom's mother, until I asked if I could borrow it.

Navy is not my best color, but I was in a bind, and I figured that if Madonna could wear a slip out in public, so could I. I put it on, and it fit beautifully, hitting just below the knee. It wasn't sheer, so nothing significant was exposed -- no nipples, no panties. I cinched the waist with an inexpensive black stretch belt and completed the outfit with sexy, strappy black sandals and a python-patchwork clutch.

As I prepared to leave the house, my father was baffled. "Where's your dress?" he asked.

"This is my dress," I told him, and because I am his youngest daughter, my dad has seen it all and knows when to stop asking questions. He shook his head and laughed.

As I walked onto the Delano's terrace -- a seductive sea of overstuffed wicker sofas draped with tanned bodies sporting Dior sunglasses, perfectly pressed Italian linens and rhinestoned Manolos -- I was a bit nervous, though I knew I looked good and could hold my own with this crowd. My self-confidence kicked into high gear the minute I spotted my friend and her lightning-quick head-to-toe appraisal of my outfit confirmed my gamble. We exchanged an air kiss, and her first question was, "Where did you get that dress?" She was smiling the smile of a woman who always buys the best -- or the most expensive, and equates that with "best" -- and who also appreciates a great find. When I told her the source, she immediately responded, "Is there another one in that drawer?"

Lucky for me, my mother had style even when our family didn't have much money. Of course, when I was a little girl growing up in Miami, I didn't know this. My mother was simply an embarrassment to me and my siblings because of:

How she dressed -- Roman sandals and loud prints, sometimes going braless.

Where she shopped -- Goodwill and church rummage sales.

Her choice of deodorant for herself and her family -- baking soda.

And what she expected us to wear -- secondhand clothes, usually with "good" labels.

None of our friends had a mother quite like ours -- Mom was a strong-willed, hot-tempered feminist, though I never heard that word used in our house. She hated -- and still avoids -- any kind of housekeeping, yet she would spend time almost every week carefully ironing our organdy and cotton dresses so we would be presentable for church. She was, and still is, a woman whose life can be marked, at least in part, by the clothes she wore -- new and used -- for minor and major moments in her family's life.

Mom got her sense of what was "good" from her own mother, Marie Neylon, a woman whose hair was always pulled into a bun, stray gray strands held in place by tortoiseshell combs, a woman whose "old country" (Bohemia-Hungary) way of doing things was an embarrassment to her only daughter, Jacqueline. Grandma cooked potato pancakes and beef stew with fluffy dumplings, boiled her bedsheets with bluing in copper pots after they came out of the wringer washer and braided her own rugs using upholstery fabric remnants. She was a woman who could sit in the basement for hours on end "picking" feathers, emerging with a halo of fluff on her head after separating the down -- the softest, finest feathers -- from larger, sharper feathers, so she could make the best down-filled pillows.

None of this sat well with Mom, who will be the first to admit she was a spoiled, unappreciative child when she was growing up on the south side of Chicago. Mom wanted a modern mother, someone who went to the beauty salon, served "American" food and aspired to own wall-to-wall carpeting, rather than sneering at it.

But Grandma Neylon did embrace at least one pastime the two of them could share: She loved to shop, and she patronized only the nicest stores, even though there was very little extra spending money for a family of five living on a policeman's salary. While my grandfather might be wearing a secondhand camel-hair coat -- my mother remembers a man more interested in good books than clothes, as long as his uniform passed inspection -- his two sons were dressed in Belgian linen suits, and his daughter never wore a hand-me-down.

In the thirties, Grandma Neylon's idea of a pleasant day away from her household duties was to take Mom to Marshall Field, which filled a twelve-story granite building covering a whole city block in downtown Chicago. Once inside this elegant store, Grandma would charge a half pound of fancy mixed nuts, freshly scooped into a box and still warm. Then, pecans and cashews in hand, she and my mother would munch their way from department to department, admiring all the nicest merchandise, lingering in the vast furniture department because that was my grandmother's favorite and shopping for clothes for my mother whenever she needed them. Invariably, at the end of the day, my grandfather would be circling the block in the family car, because they were always late getting back to their prearranged pickup spot.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Alligators, Old Mink and New Money by Alison Houtte Copyright © 2005 by Alison Houtte. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

For fashion lovers, flea market fanatics and thrift store junkies, this book is the perfect find. Former fashion model Alison Houtte, with the help of her sister, journalist Melissa Houtte, offers an enthusiastic memoir of her family's obsession with fashion, her early days as a model and her second career as owner of Hooti Couture, a Brooklyn boutique specializing in vintage clothing. Houtte's chatty manner and anecdotal storytelling style give the book a quick pace, as she visits country auctions and estate sales looking for the perfect items for her loyal and eclectic clientele. Throughout, she weaves in shopping tips for amateurs and admits mistakes she's made through the years (like the time she priced a jacket by Bonnie Cashin, best known for dressing Ingrid Bergman, at a mere $150, compared with its true worth of $600). The simple line illustrations throughout are a nice touch, and a "Vintage Shopper's Guide" at the end reflects Houtte's extensive knowledge of the trade. Houtte's emphasis on personal style and emotional ties to clothing make this a book that many women-and men-will enjoy. Agent, Gail Ross. (On sale Nov. 22) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Once a fashion model, now owner of chic boutique Hooti Couture in Brooklyn, Alison Houtte joins forces with her journalist sister to discuss the joys of vintage clothing and the stories they tell. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A latter-day Secondhand Rose shares stories of her vintage clothing shop, her best finds and her family history in a memoir that shines with pure likeability. The story is Alison's, though she penned it with sister Melissa. A pretty girl who's darn nice, too, Alison's first career was as a haute couture model in Europe and New York. Ten years passed happily and lucratively, but like most fashion models, she eventually had to find a second vocation. Here, she relates the story of round two. Her boutique, Hooti Couture, began on a lark as a partnership with a friend. The friend is gone, but the store remains, a repository of treasures dug up on scouting expeditions to estate sales and country auctions. Alison was bred for this game; her mother combed the Salvation Army store racks for "good" labels. Now she can spot a muddy old dress and know instinctively that after a little Woolite and some new buttons, it will go in the shop window and sell in hours. This determined optimism is paired with a gift for promotion, endowing Alison's finds with a seductive, nobody-else-will-have-one patina. She extends this rosy vision to her neighborhood as well, frequently touting her Brooklyn home's myriad charms. (Readers will not be surprised to learn that she is vice president of the North Flatbush Improvement District.) The relentless cheeriness is saved from being cloying by Alison's frank assessment of her failures in romance and business, although she can't ever be kept down for long. It's a tell-all of a different sort; the intimate details of her relationships are left vague, but the strap of a handbag is analyzed with precision. Vicarious pleasure for anyone who loves hearing about a great find.

Kirkus Reviews

A must for all vintage die-hards…This lovingly compiled tome shows how clothes capture our memories and harness our imaginations.

Glamour (UK)