It was a junque junkie’s dream outing: to accompany none other than Rachel Ashwell, the founder of the Shabby Chic home-decor empire and the queen of secondhand stylishness, on a flea-market shopping spree.
Our mission was to observe firsthand Ashwell’s techniques in black-belt bargain-hunting and learn how she separates treasures from trinkets and trash.
And on a personal level, it was a chance to see just how close the eye of an amateur could come to matching Ashwell’s prowess. It would be cool-like having Martha Stewart teach you to wallpaper a soffit.
As it turned out, the actual experience was more like “Driving Miss Daisy” than the fantasized “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Ashwell, who lives in Malibu, Calif., was to be in Chicago for an appearance and book-signing at Shabby Chic’s recently relocated Chicago store (46 E. Superior St.). She had agreed, through her publisher, to an expedition to Grayslake Antiques and Collectibles flea market, a large, well-run show held the second Sunday of the month at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Grayslake.
Jacket hype promises her new book, “Rachel Ashwell’s Shabby Chic Treasure Hunting & Decorating Guide” (Regan Books, $30), will help the reader find out exactly what to look for, what to leave behind, how to bargain and transport your treasures home, and so it does.
But reading how to do it in the air-conditioned privacy of your home is one thing; actually practicing it in the hot, dusty arena of an outdoor market, it turns out, is another.
The eagerly anticipated adventure had its tensions–even before it actually began.
For someone who takes on the chaos and cacophony of flea markets, Ashwell turns out to be as picky as the princess of pea-and-mattress fame. She hates her hotel. She wilts at the suggestion of walking half a block to meet the car that will pick her up. And, during the hourlong drive from her downtown hotel, Miss Rachel puts the brakes on sharing tips on flea-marketing with the chauffeur/reporter, preferring instead to share gossip with her store manager.
Finally, after buying a $3 ticket at the flea market’s entrance and dodging a man carrying off a large spinning wheel, Ashwell seems to become psychically charged–the spiritual equivalent of stepping into a phone booth and becoming Superbuyer. She goes right into action, zooming in on the first booth she encounters. She picks up a small mirrored wood medicine cabinet, then quickly puts it down.
“The reason I’m hesitating on this is it would need a whole new back,” says Ashwell, who sells her original custom collection at four Shabby Chic corporate stores in Santa Monica, Calif., New York City, San Francisco and Chicago. (Her Shabby Chic Studio line, which includes less-expensive, mass-produced furniture, bedding, lampshades and other accessories, is sold in 16 in-store Shabby Chic boutiques, including one to open in September at Anna’s Mostly Mahogany in Lake Forest.) Ashwell points out that the cabinet’s original back has buckled and pulled away.
“This, to me, is just on the other side of shabby,” says the woman who made slipcovers chic, igniting one of the strongest furniture trends of the ’90s. She notes, however, that the cabinet is a fixable find. “If it’s still here when I come back, I’ll look at it again. But I’m not going to jump on it.”
She passes on some white pottery. It’s another near-buy, she says, “close but not quite” Shabby Chic–because of big chips.
She is interested in Victoriana up to the 1940s, she says as she glides past booths. Her mother was an antique doll dealer, her father a dealer in old books. “From a very young age, I followed them around flea markets. Subliminally, it taught me a lot,” she says.
She has a predator’s eye for possibilities, picking from a distance that one object in a jumble that fits into her criteria for “Shabby Chic.” She does it so quickly, her driver du jour can barely follow. What she is looking for, she explains, is quiet elegance, subtly muted colors of dusty rose, mint and celadon, ivory, cream, faded gray, sky blue or clean, crisp white, worn moldings of delicate beading and crumbling roses. Pieces can be worn and faded, but must maintain fine workmanship and be functional and practical.
At one table, she lifts a pitcher with a rose pattern she likes, though it is “probably not terribly old.” The piece is tagged $125. “In my mind, I’d like to spend not more than $80,” she says. “What’s your best price?” she asks the dealer. He thinks and comes back with $100.
“I’m not a big bargainer,” Ashwell says as she opens an envelope stuffed with cash, possibly sensing our disappointment at not witnessing a toe-to-toe price war. “I think it is always important before I begin to decide in my mind, `What do I want to spend?’ Otherwise, it gets confusing.
“Obviously, bringing cash is easier,” she says.
She asks the dealer if she can pick the piece up later.
“Make sure you make a note of where it is,” she advises, borrowing the reporter’s pen. “Put down some description such as `three rows from the fence.’ “Otherwise, when you come back, you’ll say, `Oh my God, it all looks the same.’ Believe me, I’ve lost many things by not doing that.”
“I normally whiz around because my eye works really quickly. Then I go back once or twice at a slower pace. When the doors open, you’ve got competition,” she adds. “Flea markets are like a rabbit warren–you find yourself coming and going, so try to have a method.
“Stay left or right; otherwise you miss some, repeat others.”A little farther down she stops in her tracks and says, “This is something I don’t do.” Her disapproving gaze is directed at a large, generic-looking brown chest, glossily refinished.
“This whole distressed thing has taken off,” she says. “The stuff that has been all reworked already, I don’t bother with. This is faux; I can tell that instantly. Besides, the cost for the labor involved has been worked in the price.
“I used to buy the other side of shabby,” she adds. “Now I buy the other side of chic. My taste has cleaned up over the years.
“Milk glass is another good thing,” she says, picking up two pieces at another vendor. It’s relatively inexpensive and it looks good as a collection. Little nicks and chips are OK, as it is not a bad price, $7 and $10 for two vases.
“Put several of the same thing together and it is a story,” she says.
A little later on, as the sun begins to fry the treeless field, Ashwell, who advises in her book to “consider the weather and be prepared,” borrows sunscreen from a dealer from whom she makes a purchase. As she moves through the market, many vendors recognize her and call out to her. She seems as much a star as any of her celebrity clientele–among them Whoopi Goldberg, Tracy Ullman and Madonna (Oprah Winfrey dedicated a whole show to Ashwell’s T-shirt sheets).
Fans at the flea market remark on how much they like her new book or a story they saw on her. She basks serenely in their homage and seems more relaxed and content after several of these encounters.
She purchases a white vase for $70, though it has a blotch or discoloration. She doesn’t mind this kind of imperfection, she says, “but you want it to hold water.”
A large display gets the attention of the driver, who thinks it’s Ashwell’s kind of stuff. “A lot of this is happening,” she says, “Shabby Chic vignettes. When I get close, most of it misses a bit. Most of the pieces are too theatrical. Shabby Chic still has simple elegance to it.”
After she sends her manager to collect everything she has bought and it’s piled at her feet, she drops her bombshell. “I can’t think of any of these things I would have in my own home.”
She herself does not collect.
“I love them, but for my own head space, I need a clear mind,” Ashwell says. That’s why her home is “pretty simple and plain.”
Two employees from her shop appear, having arrived on their own, and begin removing the booty from the battlefield. On the ride back to the city, Ashwell tells us she bought only smalls here “that can go directly to my shop.” But that’s not because Grayslake compares unfavorably to Los Angeles fleas. What was lacking at this visit, she says, was a truck.
Curious to find out what she would do with her flea market finds, we swung by the Shabby Chic store the next day. The “perfect” Shabby Chic basket is being used for display and the white vases, some of which are marked more than double what Ashwell paid for them, look marvelous in the shop.
The day’s outing proves Ashwell certainly does know how to turn the shabby into the chic and makes few mistakes in doing so. It also drives home the point that Martha Stewart, that other diva of decor, does not have a monopoly on self-absorption.
Writes Ashwell in a this-side-of-chic mood in her new book: “You will make mistakes; I still do. It happens. I accept my imperfections.”
%c TAKING A PASS
%c –A small bedside white chest is a no-no, though the reporter thought it might be a yes-yes. “Because it is more of a veneer than white painted wood,” Rachel Ashwell explains, “it has no finesse or the quality” she is looking for, and the flowers are wrong, “not my feel of flowers. And it is too damaged down here,” she says, pointing out dings and dents on the bottom.
— A larger, cream-colored chest of drawers gets a look, then is rejected. “Even though the paint is at the right stage, I like finer molding; this one is too funky. And I usually like to have legs with casters on.
— A pink tulle parasol at $18 “just misses the point to me. It’s got plastic flowers. But it is lovely for store display.
— Sand-blasted
medical cabinets and institutional metal furniture are the rage, but not her thing. Country is not her thing either.
— She spies a –large display-type cabinet almost identical to one she shows how to rehab in her book. In Los Angeles, she would seriously consider buying this piece, she says. “I like that it has the whole glass thing (large panes in front doors) going on. She would put new lining on the inside she says, and would probably pull an odd protrusion on the back off “in a second and paint it white. Once I do all that, this could end up in bedroom or living room,” she says.
%c SCOOPING IT UP
%c –A Norwegian marriage trunk from 1817, with hand-forged goosehead hinges and rivets as eyes. “The pink handle is what I love about this more than anything else,” she says. It’s a perfect Shabby Chic piece, and she pays $200.
— Alabaster lamp bases. She always has them rewired, puts a nice cord on them. She always looks for lamp bases, and matches them with her line of “nice, contemporary Shabby Chic lampshades.”
— Two small oval frames encrusted with seashells, another strong Shabby Chic focus, which will get beveled mirrors in them.
— A little floral-decorated plate for $10. Ones with pithy sayings on them such as one shown in the book that says “give us this day our daily bread” are most
coveted.
— A pile of pale vintage faux flowers
at about $5 each, for gift wrap and
“decorated stuff.”
— A tiny cobalt blue/floral demitasse cup, a vintage coffee and saucer, a cream and sugar set, all for $89. “I do trade shows with my bedding and these are perfect for display,” she says. At the same dealer, she buys a Victorian hanging lampshade, in old ivory cream with lace and fringe trim, for $119 and a faux flower-trimmed basket, which she points out is “pretty much Shabby Chic to its perfection. It is still complete. The colors are spot-on for my palette. It is just a really beautiful piece.” It costs $42.
— A white wicker sofa with flared-out arms and “a sort of elegance to it,” on which she would “put mushy cushions.” But first she would put water on the wicker to tighten it. “They also want $95 for it,”
she says.
———-
THE FACTS
Grayslake Antiques & Collectibles Flea Market
What: A large flea market with up to several hundred dealers outdoors, weather permitting, plus three buildings filled with indoor dealers who deal strictly in antiques and collectibles.
When: The market is held the second Sunday of every month through the end of the year. Remaining dates for this year are Aug. 9, Sept. 13, Oct. 11, Nov. 8 and Dec. 13.
Time: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Lake County Fairgrounds, U.S. Highway 45 and Illinois Highway 120, Grayslake.
Cost: $3.
Call 847-223-1433
