Welcome to The Revival

More than forty years ago, long before resale was fashionable, a very fabulous New Yorker named Myrna built one of NYC’s original consignment businesses. She was helping women consign and shop pre-loved fashion decades before anyone was talking about sustainability, circular fashion, or the resale economy. My connection to the store began there. I’d been a customer since I was eighteen, buying almost everything there and never imagining that one day I’d be running the business myself.

Fast forward to 2015. I was at a crossroads and was trying to figure out my next journey. I had just gotten married, wanted to start a family, and knew I was ready for a career change. After years of traveling the world in finance and beauty marketing, I wanted to build something of my own and put down some roots.

Around that same time, Myrna was considering selling. Or so I thought. In a twist that still makes me laugh, she took me to the altar twice. We had a deal, she changed her mind, and I was convinced the opportunity was gone. But I believed so strongly in what she had built that my husband and I flew to Florida to meet with her. We talked for hours. Somehow, my very tenacious husband won her over, and eventually she decided I was the right person to take the business into its next chapter. That decision wasn’t easy for either of us. For Myrna, it meant letting go of something she had devoted her life to. For me, it meant taking a leap into an industry I loved but had never worked in.

I still remember celebrating the deal over dinner at a friend’s restaurant. I brought Kai with me in his car seat, and halfway through the evening he had a full diaper blowout. I was wearing a beautiful vintage Chanel jacket, and my mother came into the bathroom to help. She looked at me changing a diaper on the restaurant floor and laughed. “I never thought I’d see you changing a baby’s diaper on the bathroom floor of a restaurant,” she said, “but of course you’re doing it in Chanel.” That pretty much sums up my life.

2015 was a big year for me. I became a mother and bought the business that would eventually become Designer Revival. Looking back, the timing feels slightly insane. New motherhood and entrepreneurship have a lot in common: you’re figuring it out as you go, you’re operating on very little sleep, and no one hands you a manual. At the time, the business was still called Designer Resale. There were no website, little social media presence, and certainly no live selling. The business had been built the old-fashioned way… through relationships, trust, and word of mouth. My background was in finance and beauty marketing, but owning a retail business was a completely different challenge. Suddenly every decision, good or bad, landed on my desk.

One of the first things I did was rename the company to Designer Revival. I loved the idea of giving beautiful things another life, but I also loved what the word revival represented: reinvention, possibility, and second chances. Over the last decade, I’ve watched both the industry and New York change in ways I never could have predicted. What I’ve come to appreciate most, though, is the community that has grown around this business.

There are the consignors who have trusted us with pieces they’ve loved for years. The collectors searching for something special. The neighborhood regulars who stop in just to say hello. The stylists, fellow vintage dealers, and creative people from fashion houses who wander through our doors looking for inspiration. They’ve all become part of the story. Behind every item that comes through our doors is a person and a moment in their life. I’ve sat with women navigating divorces, career changes, moves, celebrations, losses, and fresh starts. Clothing, I’ve learned, is rarely just about the clothes.

There have been plenty of challenges over the years, including some I never could have imagined when I signed the papers in 2015. But ten years later, we’re still here.

And maybe that’s because Designer Revival isn’t just a store, It’s a second act for the pieces we sell, for the people who consign them and in many ways for me too…

This Substack is where I’ll share stories from inside the world of luxury resale, observations on fashion and culture, and what I’ve learned from a decade of running a small business in New York City.

Some stories will be funny. Some will be chaotic. A few might be lessons learned the hard way. But all of them are real.

Welcome to The Revival.

I’m so glad you’re here.

XX,
Tiffany