"You recognize the X-Males? Professor Xavier has this monitoring gadget that tracks all these mutants all around the world. Properly, that is kinda like my reminiscence for style," mentioned Johnny Valencia of Pechuga Classic. He works with shoppers corresponding to Kim Kardashian and Lori Harvey to find extremely uncommon classic style.
Margot Decide for NY Publish
Even Kim Kardashian’s konnections couldn’t assist rating the costume of her desires: a classic John Galliano-era Dior frock sewn from fake newsprint and made well-known by Carrie Bradshaw on “Intercourse and the Metropolis.” However there was one man who may discover it for her.
“She reached out to me, personally, in my DMs, to ask me about it, and whether or not I had one,” Johnny Valencia informed The Publish. “That’s the rationale Kim Okay began speaking to me.”
He managed to trace down the holy grail — however the purchaser refused to promote. Nonetheless, Kim was so impressed by his potential to find the elusive garment that she is now a consumer, as is her sister Kourtney. And Valencia did make Kim proud of a hard-to-find Jean Paul Gaultier cyber-dot costume from 1995.
Because the Los Angeles-based founding father of Pechuga Classic, Valencia, 33, is the key weapon — the Indiana Jones — for A-list fashionistas: They will ship him on any unimaginable buying mission and know they received’t be disenchanted.
Valencia, nonetheless, suggests a unique film analogy.
“You recognize the X-Males? Professor Xavier has this monitoring gadget that tracks all these mutants all around the world. Properly, that’s kinda like my reminiscence for style,” he mentioned, including that, as a Virgo, he’s painstakingly detailed, too.
Regardless of the supply of his superpowers, Valencia is making a wholesome residing, along with his highest single sale in 2021 hitting $50,000. The premise of his online-only enterprise is easy. “Come to me with a request,” he mentioned, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Take HGTV character Sabrina Soto, who needed a classic Vivienne Westwood pirate hat for a current shoot. Valencia contacted a supply — “a surfer from California, who lives life like a socialite however is a punk at coronary heart” — who he knew was an avid collector of that interval. The surfer drove a tough cut price, charging Johnny a lot that he broke it up into two installments. (Valencia buys on shoppers’ behalf outright, making a premium on each sale, however doesn’t cost an hourly charge.)
“I’m probably not in it for the cash,” mentioned.
Nonetheless, he’s dealing in dear treasures, just like the $20,000 costume he offered mannequin Lori Harvey. She had DM’ed him asking for a uncommon Tom Ford-era Gucci frock from 1997, a costume she had failed to seek out on her personal. As quickly as she requested Valencia, although, he considered one other consumer, one who’d grown up in London and had a formidable haul of catwalk hits from that decade. Positive sufficient, she had the precise costume, and he brokered the sale inside days.
Tyrina Lee, who works in style and lives in Beverly Hills, mentioned she’s in all probability spent $10,000 or so with Valencia, increase her assortment, a lot of which is from Dior.
“Folks can’t consider I can purchase these items — it’s belongings you don’t assume that anyone may discover. You give him a job, and he comes again not solely with the merchandise however with a narrative on how he obtained it,” Lee, 35, informed The Publish. “He’s gone to Paris to choose up stuff for me.”
Lee recalled the primary time she purchased from Valencia, and the way suspicious she was. She needed to put on a selected Galliano-era Dior puffa jacket — however, she mentioned, there have been maybe three ever made.
“Nobody may discover this jacket for me, and I’d been in search of 5 years. So I informed my assistant that I used to be getting scammed when [Valencia] mentioned he’d have it to my lodge by the subsequent morning,” she mentioned.
When the bundle arrived the subsequent day at 10 a.m., “I used to be in tears. I known as him up and mentioned, ‘You might have an official purchaser, I'm obsessed’ and I began giving him unimaginable duties. However when he says he’ll attempt to discover one thing? It means he undoubtedly will.”
Luxurious looking is an unlikely profession path for Johnny, who was born to an immigrant household from El Salvador and sensible sufficient at college for his household to anticipate him to turn into a diplomat. He scored a gig in France as prep for that however shortly pivoted when he arrived, “Emily in Paris” fashion, within the Metropolis of Mild. All the opposite children in his tony program at a college there, Valencia recollects, have been kitted out in designer threads.
“I'd see them coming in, in fantastically tailor-made macs and full-length mink coats, and was, like, ‘The place do I get a type of?’” he mentioned.
The reply: the Vivienne Westwood boutique in Marais, the place Valencia sprung for a coat that value 3 times his lease. It modified his life — at the very least as soon as he paid off the invoice — by sparking a fascination for style that he parlayed into gigs at a PR movie and as a contract occasion photographer in LA.
“I used to be a junior publicist pitching bras and diamonds, and it taught me I may promote water to a fish,” he mentioned.
Quickly, Valencia was utilizing his ardour for analysis and Professor X-like powers of location
to deal classic as a facet hustle. He shortly acknowledged it might be the principle gig. That was three years in the past, and since then, he’s labored with everybody from Regulation Roach — the stylist to Zendaya and Halsey whom he calls a mentor — to numerous non-public shoppers, movie star and in any other case, together with Madonna, Grimes and Bella Hadid.
Couture collector Renée Howard is one other Valencia booster. The Orange County, Calif., resident has relied on him to supply hard-to-find clothes like items of Jean Paul Gaultier’s cyber-dot assortment from the Nineteen Nineties.
“He makes your style desires come true. He’s the type of man who says, ‘I’ve obtained one thing for you,’ and BOOM,” she mentioned.
One such wow second got here when she tasked him with rounding out her Versace Pop Artwork assortment. “‘Are you able to get me the costume Naomi Campbell wore, to match the pants and jacket?'” Howard remembered asking. “4 months later, it’s in my closet.”
She’s additionally seen his high-scrutiny strategies from each side. Howard, it seems, was the collector who owned the Galliano newspaper costume craved by Kim Kardashian.
“[Valencia] thought I wasn’t telling the reality that I owned it, as a result of he’d solely seen it as soon as earlier than, and that was in a museum,” she mentioned. However as soon as he ascertained the frock was the actual deal, “He stored elevating the value to purchase it — I imply, it was excellent cash, however I didn’t need to promote it.” However, Howard added, “We’ve had a relationship ever seen — we’ve been joined on the hip.
“He'll discover what you want and wish, however not simply that. He’ll discover what you thought you
didn’t want and now you need it.”
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