Neal Rubin

Rachel's Place is classy

Entrepreneur stumbles into vintage clothing business

This is the beauty of commerce in the city. You start with a dream and some space on a sidewalk, and before long you're showing a sequined women's jacket to a Michael Jackson impersonator in the comfort of your own resale shop.

It's actually a trifle steamy inside Rachel's Place, but it still beats last winter when Rachel Leggs was wrestling with little things like the heat and lighting. Now she's the full-fledged proprietor of an unlikely store in an even less likely spot, a 100-year-old North Corktown brownstone with a scenic view of I-75.

Make yourself a barrel barbecue grill, find an empty lot, and you're in the restaurant business. Hook up a hose in an old garage and you're hand-washing cars. Leggs, 33, started out last August with a few pieces of vintage clothing and some odd bits of furniture out front of her mom's rental property at 2124 Pine St.

People liked what she was selling, so she found more of it. She spent the chilly months hammering the building into shape, figured out what should hang where and what it should cost, and opened the doors just before Independence Day.

Tyuawn Brown, 28, the substitute Jackson, stumbled across her this week, arriving on a burgundy bicycle with coaster brakes and a packet of his newspaper clippings in the basket.

"You see this jacket right here?" he said. It was black and V-cut, with shimmery silver discs. "This would be perfect for 'Billie Jean.' I would kill on stage with this jacket."

He put it on hold, pending the obtainment of $15. Then he hugged the store owner. She hugged him back.

Nostalgic impressions

Another reality of business in Detroit: There's no overestimating the market for nostalgia.

One-point-three miles from Leggs' doorstep, you can stand at the intersection of Miracles Boulevard and Contours Lane. Martha Reeves, whose principal qualification was some hit records 40 years ago, sits on the City Council.

The vintage clothes at Rachel's Place carry labels from Himelhoch's and Jacobson's and Furs by Mark Twain Detroit, and yes, she says, customers notice. There's enough merchandise from one store that you can read the eras on the tags: J.L. Hudson, Hudson's, Dayton Hudson.

Leggs was only 7 years old when the downtown Hudson's closed, but she always appreciated novelty and quality. Oh, and quantity. "She used to change clothes, like, 50,000 times a day," says her mom, Brenda Leggs, who's worked the line for GM for 28 years. "She had her own sense of style."

"I've always been the same," says Rachel Leggs, whose resume includes a few years at Wayne State and a few years building Mustangs. "I've always wanted something really good for a decent price. I've always wanted to own a resale shop."

She's cutout for this

Some people search for a fond childhood memory and come up with Disney World. Leggs remembers a gently used Gucci bag, long strap, round, dark blue Gs against a gray background.

Out on the sidewalk last year, she says, it felt like a garage sale. This feels like a dream. On the main floor, she can show you a hand-beaded wedding dress, mid-1960s, probably $10,000 new. Perched upstairs in the room with all the menswear is a pair of size 14 rental-style bowling shoes -- theoretically priced at $20, but nobody pays the sticker.

Find the building with the RESALE SHOP sign in glittery letters on poster board and you'll also find a red leather layered skirt, size 8, $45-but-probably-$25. Necklaces made of beads, of shells and of polished wooden hexagons. An Andy Warhol apron with a motif of mushroom soup labels. A promotional pitcher from Tang.

Leggs discovers her items in "places you wouldn't believe" and that she won't talk about; it's a competitive world out there. A busy one, too. Leggs says she sorts, cleans and irons every piece of clothing in the store, then writes the prices on heavy paper tags she makes herself.

"I do a little bit of everything every day," she says, hugging included. Brown liked his a lot, and he didn't have to come back for it.

"This is my first time ever meeting her, and she has a beautiful soul," he declared.

Cool clothes, too.

nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874