Rhinestones, Bubbles, and Couture at Lidow Archive
Once upon a time, Very Famous came across one of the sparkliest, most fabulous Instagram accounts they had ever seen. From limo-riding, Gucci-sunglasses-wearing poodles named Buffy to Gripoix for Chanel Byzantine crosses, it was a true fashion fantasyland. Then we met its fairy godmother Haile Lidow, owner and founder of Lidow Archive.
A clothing rental and styling service, Lidow Archive debuted in August with over 4,000 shimmering pieces of vintage and couture. Haile grew up in Los Angeles, thrifting in and around the city, and some of the pieces from her collection have been with her since her early teen years. We caught her just after she finished running around for New York Fashion Week and got the story of how rhythmic gymnastics, a very glamorous grandmother, and a rhinestone purse emblazoned with FASHIONISTA led to the world of Lidow Archive.
Your space looks so cool! I was watching your launch video, and it looks like a fantasyland.
The studio is based in Bushwick in Brooklyn. It’s actually based out of my house. I live with my girlfriend—we have a duplex apartment—so upstairs is our living area and the basement is my studio.
This plays a big part in how the business was started because two months after we moved in, there was a flood in the basement. Finally, I had everything in one place after having it scattered in storage units and in my apartment, but it came at a price—literally. But this business wouldn’t have started without the flood.
Yeah, I was gonna ask how you made the jump to running your own business.
It kind of happened through me working my way through the fashion industry in different aspects of it. I worked on the magazine side of things, and I realized that wasn’t for me but I learned a lot. I worked as a stylist assistant, which made me realize that styling is really what I’m passionate about.
I’ve always been one to wear a full outfit all the time.
Working as an assistant to the president of a PR company, I saw what that was like. All those things made me realize that I don’t really want to work in that kind of environment. I wanted to go off on my own, so I went off as a freelance wardrobe stylist, which was hard because people usually assist for a long time before going off on their own. It was a struggle; I definitely wasn’t getting as many jobs as I wanted to be getting.
When the flood happened, I got hit with the loss of a lot of my pieces and an insane dry cleaning bill to salvage the rest. It changed my perspective. I went from being afraid and too attached to my clothes to let other people use them—I was either wearing them or using them for my own styling—then the flood desensitized me to that fear. If you’re renting things out, I try to protect myself against it as much as possible, but it’s inevitable that eventually something will get lost or ruined.
That’ll always hurt because every piece in my collection is something that I hand-selected that I can tell you a full story about. But at the end of the day, they’re just clothes and the flood really helped me realize that.
That happened a little over a year ago. Then I decided, OK, I’m going to start documenting all of my pieces, and I want to start renting them out. My best friend was unemployed at the time, and it just worked out where I would hire him on a day rate to help me go through and photograph all of my pieces and document everything we could find out about them.
Kevin, he’s my first employee and my right hand, he custom-built us a database from scratch to hold all the information. That took us a year, and through doing that we also had a better understanding of the brand. We learned a lot about the threads that were consistent throughout it. At first look, it would seem kind of random, but everything made sense.
We decided to make it a brand instead of just a rental company.
What kinds of things have you learned about yourself and your interests and style?
I think the biggest realization for me was when I actually started collecting. I always really loved clothes, even as a three-year-old, my mom would try to put out three different options of outfits and I would be like, “No, I’m wearing this leopard-print skirt with this pink, sparkly top and cow-print boots.”
Life-long fashion plate!
I vividly remember going to the playground with that outfit as a three-year-old. The first time I can remember beginning to collect was when I was probably 10 or 11. We went into one of those accessories stores that’s not a Claire’s, one of those boutique, specific-to-the-mall accessory stores around especially in the early 2000s.
There was this Lucite purse behind the counter, up on a high shelf, and it was covered in rhinestones and these enamel figurines of shoes and purses. In rhinestones it said FASHIONISTA. I remember so vividly falling in love with this piece, and saving up for it and going back and buying it. I was a little kid, so when I handed this guy the cash to buy it, he was like, “Are you sure you want to spend this much money on this?” and I was like “Yes, I do.” I still have it, and it’s one of my favorite pieces.
I love that! So you’ve been collecting since you were a little kid?
I grew up in LA, and vintage and thrifting were a big passion of mine. My best friend and I, especially after we got our driver’s licenses, we’d drive two hours to flea markets and go shopping. I still have pieces that I bought when I was 14, 15, 16 in my collection that I still wear or that get rented out, pieces that I still cherish.
That’s so cool! I feel like for most people that’s a bit of a later-in-life thing, so that’s rare to have those pieces from your early teenage years.
I mean, also probably bordering on a hoarding problem.
But now you’ve turned it into a business! And 4,000 pieces, that’s such a huge catalog.
You can look at like 400 of my pieces online currently, but you can also send us an email with a mood board or a vibe, and we can curate the images and send them back to you. On our internal database we have everything, it’s just the process of actually reuploading them online—we use a different system.
What kind of people have you worked with so far?
We’ve had a lot of stylists pulling from us, which is exciting. We just actually got a cover on Elle Russia with Winnie Harlow—it’s funny because it’s literally a glimpse of an earring but still so exciting. We rented out to various international Vogue publications, and some other indie magazines. I’m really inspired by drag queens, and the drag queen Thorgy Thor wore my pieces to New York DragCon a couple of weeks ago, which was really exciting.
Do you have a favorite story or two of a specific piece and where it came from?
This isn’t a specific piece, but in April of this year, I got 36 boxes of my grandmother’s clothes. She was such an incredible woman. In our launch video, all of our mannequins are painted by my grandmother.
She was a big inspiration for me, which is something I’ve realized even more recently, opening all of those boxes and taking out every piece of clothing and recognizing certain things. There’s this one dress that she designed and had custom-made for her that she wore to the opening of this exhibit at LACMA. I was a kid, but I remember her wearing it, and I remember thinking, “Oh my god, what a beautiful dress, what a beautiful woman.”
That was really, really cool, and made me understand myself and my collection even more because it added a side to it that I didn’t have. She had a bit more of an architectural style that’s maybe more inspired by Asian culture. She spent a lot of time in China and Japan, and she purchased a lot of her pieces there.
36 boxes! That’s so much! That’s incredible.
It was nice because, after the flood, I had lost so much stuff and it nicely replenished my collection, plus more. I just remembered one funny story. So, there’s this Dolce & Gabbana collection, I believe it’s 2003, and there are these “SEX” chokers. They’re gold chains and in gold metal, they just say “SEX” and there’s a belt version too.
Absolutely Fabulous is one of my favorite shows, and in one of the episodes, Edina is wearing the “SEX” choker. It was a very iconic thing in the 1990s, and I just began obsessively searching for one of these pieces. I couldn’t find them for anything less than over a $1,000, and I’m not going to spend that much money nor could I, so I just kept looking.
Then a few months ago, Kevin sent me a link to the “SEX” belt, and I was like, “Oh my god, it’s actually at a reasonable price,” and we’re looking further and we realized that the normal belt was maybe an inch and a half, maybe two inches wide. This belt was like five inches wide, and we were like, “What is going on?” but it was authentic D&G.
We realized that it was custom-made for Cardi B in J. Lo’s “Dinero” music video.
It’s hard to tell because it wasn’t actually manufactured, but we think they made two of them for her and we have one of them.
That is so cool!
It was when they were trying to hide her pregnancy too. Knowing that’s where the belt came from and how did I end up with it, you know, it’s exciting.
What started your love of sparkly, campy, fun things?
I think it’s literally ingrained in me. I was a rhythmic gymnast for 12 years, and rhythmic gymnasts have these really incredible costumes that are a little more over the top than the artistic gymnasts who do the beam, bar, vault. Rhymthic is with the ribbon, the rope, the ball, it’s slightly less known in the US.
We had these elaborate costumes that were completely rhinestone, and I remember one year, I got to get them custom-designed for me by this prestigious leotard designer. I was so incredibly enamored with the process of having something designed for me and then the rhinestones were just completely enamoring.
From there, I was in middle school, and it was when everyone had flip phones, and I started making these little sock holders for the phones. I would cut off the tops of socks and then sew the bottom and rhinestone the sock.
People would hire me to rhinestone their flip phones.
I think that’s where it really got rooted in me. From the time I was born, I was one of those kids that, as soon as I saw a sparkle, I was distracted and wanted to follow it.
What’s next? Do you have any upcoming fun projects?
We decided that we’re going to treat ourselves in between a magazine and a designer in the sense that we’re going to put out about two lookbooks a year. We shot our first lookbook in August, and we’re getting everything together and figuring out how we’re going to be presenting it to publications. I’m very, very proud of those photos.
We also have rolling papers on our website, which are really fun.
I pretty much wanted to build Lidow Archive as a brand and have the clothing rental company just be the beginning of it. It’ll always be a focal point because shopping is something I’m incredibly passionate about, and I’m very happy I’ve found a way to justify shopping as a career. But I’m also a wardrobe stylist, and I really want Lidow Archive to be something that can grow in different directions.
A quality I really miss about things is the ability to create this fantasyland that people can disappear into. I love Bubbles, for instance, I love the characters you’re creating.
I want to live in a fantasyland, you know, so I want to create that and make that my brand. That’s kind of the whole thing is, I’ve had a lot of people along the way telling me not to do certain things because it might not be understood or would be too out there. I always value people’s opinions and take their guidance into consideration, but at the end of the day, I really try to stay true to my own instincts, and what I like and my world.
All photos by Jess Farran.
