Orange County Register

If you don’t think $1,800 is a real bargain for an Oscar de la Renta alligator handbag, then Recycled Rags in Corona del Mar  is not the shop for you.

Recycled Rags, Corona del Mar

Fortunately for owner Audrey Patterson, hordes of women and men have been buying her designer bargains for 40 years. Now, any business that can survive 4 decades is rare, but an independent clothing shop? That’s incredible.

Recycled Rags is, for the most part, a consignment shop for designer clothing. Audrey sells some new jewelry and hats. But those Suzi Wong gowns and Yves Saint Laurent coats belonged to someone else first, and you can add them to your closet at serious discounts.

I included Audrey and Recycled Rags in one of my It’s Your Business columns in 1990, calling it “the granddaddy of consignment shops.” The store was a mere 21 years old then.

Now, as then, she has monthly parking lot sales with 40% off the discount prices before giving the slow sellers to charity or returning them to the owner.

Audrey is a small, cheerful proprietor who still goes to the shop every day although she’s pushing 80. But don’t let that demeanor fool you. She’s a sharp business owner who says she survived countless mistakes because she’s stubborn.

“I knew nothing about business or fashion. I just loved clothes,” Audrey recalls of the store’s opening next door to its current location on Coast Highway a couple of blocks south of MacArthur Boulevard.

She takes 60% of the sale price of most items because she has to pay Corona del Mar rents ($6,000 a month for the shop, office and warehouse). Items that don’t sell within 45 days or so are removed.

In the early years she would drive to Beverly Hills to get merchandise for the shop. Now people seek her out. Over the years she has handled clothing from Cher and Barbra Streisand.

Is business impacted by the recession?

“I don’t do recessions,” she says, but then after thinking a moment, she adds, “we are getting more things in this recession…but many of our customers (who bring merchandise in to sell) aren’t necessarily trying to make money. They’re clearing room in their closets to buy more things.”

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