Haroutounian grew up trawling estate sales and yard sales alongside her mother, who is a vintage clothing dealer. “She started doing it when she was pregnant with me. She didn’t want to leave me with a babysitter,” she says. While she disliked going to sales with her mother at first, Haroutounian slowly became interested in clothing. Her mother had an affinity for American designers of the ’70s, such as Stephen Burrows, Geoffrey Beene, and Norma Kamali, which sparked Haroutounian’s obsession with clothes. “I kind of fell in love with clothes there,” she says. Her first purchase was at 10 years old when she went to a yard sale of a former rock band manager. “There were ’70s clothes, like platforms and all of these really rare T-shirts,” she says. “Everything was a quarter. Ever since then, I’ve been super into collecting.” From that sale, Haroutounian has kept a Hole T-shirt, as well as an authentic John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Bed-Ins for Peace” T-shirt that she estimates is worth about $1,000.
At 13, Haroutounian started to make a profit. Her first sale was a ’60s Swiss-made record player that she bought for $50 and resold for $1,200. Later at 16, she purchased a ’90s Betsey Johnson bondage skirt from a thrift store for $1 and sold it to one of her mother’s customers for $60. She didn’t launch her website until 2017, when she was in high school and cleaning out her closet with a friend who recommended she start selling on Depop. “I was hesitant, but when I started, everything sold pretty quickly,” she says. “And I just kind of went from there.” During her time selling, Haroutounian has found some stellar gems, including a Jean Paul Gaultier tattoo dress and matching bolero from spring 1994, a pair of Versace boots from the fall 1992 S&M collection, and a Prada suit from spring 1996, which she describes as “avocado green with a Bakelite buckle.” It’s not the only celebrity-favorite piece in her collection. One of the most standout items is a red leather Chanel jacket from fall 1992, the same style that Claudia Schiffer wore on the runway.