Lauren Kaminsky, Fashion Psychic

Writer – Justin Howard @jthnomad

Fashion Psychic – Lauren Kaminsky @bygoldgirl

Location – Beauty & Essex @beautyessexla

“You either know fashion or you don’t.” — Anna Wintour

It isn’t everyday you find a high-end curated fashion collection nestled in the middle of pawn shop, let alone in a bustling Los Angles restaurant, but that is exactly what you have at Beauty & Essex. Being addicted to reality TV shows like The History Channel’s “Pawn Stars”, I wanted to take a closer look at the pawn shop. What really interested me about this pawn shop was its curated fashion collection, featuring items like designer handbags made out of 14k gold. To that end I took at moment to chat with its glamorous fashion curator, Lauren Kaminsky, a real life fashion psychic with the powers to price diamonds at a single glance and to tell fake gold from real.

Lauren Kaminsky, Fashion Psychic

JH – You are the fashion curator at Beauty & Essex.

LK – That sounds so fancy.

JH – I know. So you basically make sure the shop is merchandised with great and gorgeous items. I heard about the vintage Saint Laurent purses you had in, and some of the other fun items. I want to talk about how you define your role as far as fashion, what is your mission on that. What is it like curating a fashion collection in a restaurant? We can go on from there and talk about your favorite pieces that have been in the store, and any memorable stories you want to share. It is such an interesting concept to have an upscale pawn shop in a club restaurant. You do have some pretty high end items in the store.

JH – So, darling, what exactly is a fashion curator? I mean what is it you do?

LK – That in itself is a very long winded question and answer. My family owns pawn shops all over from Manhattan to Queens. I act as a buyer for both the real pawn shop and the pawn shop in front of Beauty & Essex. So while the restaurant doesn’t have a real operating pawn shop like what I am used to working with during the day, the pawn shop in front of the restaurant allows us to showcase what our real pawn shop has for sale as far as jewelry. And a little sampling of our great high end fashion pieces and items like Chanel bags, Hermes scarves. Things that are very much unique and that you won’t be able to walk into a normal retail store and find, you can essentially find a small sampling of in Beauty & Essex.

JH – Fantastic! Let me make sure I have this right – your family owns different pawn shops in Manhattan and what you do is that, as items come through the pawn shops, you bring in the high-end pieces to Beauty & Essex. So Beauty & Essex acts like a retail area for you.

LK – It is not just the high end items, we sell to a number of outlets and a number of private collectors. I sale to wholesalers and to retail stores so I often like to keep things different with the items I sent over to Beauty & Essex. I like to pick out a few little somethings so we do have items for everyone. Must people when they come to Beauty & Essex expect to have a fine dining experience and take in a great Manhattan established restaurant. What they don’t know is that the store in front is not just selling high end expensive pieces, we are selling a little bit of everything. You can buy a necklace for $65.00 dollars (which is one of our top selling items right now), Skull crystal encrusted bags for $2,000.00 dollars or a gorgeous estate Edwardian ring for $5,000.00. Or sports memorabilia as we have something for the guys too. But there are so many different things going on that it is what makes Beauty & Essex as a whole such an amazing place. It really is a mini Manhattan. It has a little bit of everything for everyone.

JH – I love how you have mentioned that you are basically a fashion psychic, you get the feel and vibe of a piece. That is a great line there.

LK – It is the only way. I have grown up in this business and I have come across, I literally have gone through the worst of jewelry and then the best of jewelry. I have seen a lot of it. It is really about using your hands and just touching things, feeling the quality of the craftsmanship and knowing why you are drawn to that piece at first. There is so much to go through in a day.

JH – Nice. So tell me, if this is not the most unique pawn shop I have ever seen then it is among the most interesting of ones. Tell me how did the concept of this pawn shop get started in Beauty & Essex the restaurant? How did it come to be?

LK – Well, that I can’t take any credit for. The owners of Beauty & Essex, Chris Santos and Peter Kane, fabricated the idea and came up with it is as a way to break down the space. It is a such a large restaurant, it literally goes from Essex street to Norfolk. So instead of just having the restaurant entrance right there, they needed a way to split it up. The idea was to have something high brow, low brow to the restaurant, that could fit in great with the lower East Side. A pawn shop really does that. It is a little out there.

JH – How did you come into this role you are playing at Beauty & Essex?

LK – There’s a number of different things that went into play when Beauty & Essex first opened. I am a huge foodie so the second I found that a pawn shop was opening up with a restaurant in the back and lounge cool scene was opening up in the lower Eastside I knew I had to get down there. My dad set up a meeting with the owners and they had visited our real pawn shop which is in lower Harlem. I sat down with Chris and Peter, before my dad had come to the meeting, and told them this was my calling. If it is a restaurant and has a pawn shop and I am stuck in the pawn shop industry I am there. This was happening. They were all for making it legitimate, they are very into the restaurant, they called this thing a pawn shop and they wanted it to be the real deal. They wanted to do it with me.

JH – I do enjoy how you were like “this is my job and I am going to do this, so just say ‘yes’ and smile.”

LK – It was perfect for me. I think that the love between myself, jewelry and food, it was time. There is no better place than Beauty & Essex to have a fantastic selection of jewelry, Chanel bags, we had designer shoes selling there at one point. It is a perfect mixture of everything.

JH – What are some of the more wacky stories you have from the Beauty & Essex pawn shop?

LK – Well, there was a time in the pawn shop that someone purchased an engagement ring and proposed.
I wasn’t there, but I heard about it.

JH – That is fine.

LK – Engagement rings are a huge seller for us at Beauty & Essex. I don’t know what it is, I believe that the restaurant’s romantic feel and decor, the whole light and drinking kind of brings a certain vibe to the store. So we sell tons of the Edwardian filigree style engagement rings. One guy was on his way out of the shop and got down on one knee. I love those kinds of stories. I heard stories of women coming and seeing something they like, pointing them out on their way into the restaurant. The guy they are with will sneak out during dinner and buy the item and will bring it to their table during their meal or on their way out we will give it to her. It makes me feel good that the store is playing a part in the whole dinning experience. Once again it is bringing something different that you can’t get at any other restaurant.