“People love a comeback,” said Christos Garkinos.
The TV personality — seen in Bravo’s “Dukes of Melrose” and co-owner of L.A.’s famed consignment shop Decades — has reclaimed his life, and he tells the story in his new book “Covet the Comeback: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Found Success, Lost Everything, Then Built a Fashion Empire,” out now.
“I’ve seen the ebbs and flows of his career,” said actress and producer Garcelle Beauvais at his book release dinner party on Tuesday night, held in partnership with Etro inside Spago in Beverly Hills. The two have been friends for 23 years.
“So to see him now launch this amazing network, and the book, it’s exciting,” continued Beauvais (who just revealed her exit from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”).
The network she’s referring to is the community he’s built selling luxury consignment on Instagram Live, recently passing $100 million in sales. “Not only did he figure it out, he pivoted in a way that now he’s created this network where women can be in the carpool lane and they shop, they can be at home and shop. It’s become a cult following,” said Beauvais.
Garkinos, born and raised in Detroit, moved to L.A. in 1990, working for Disney and Virgin Megastores with Richard Branson, before getting into fashion. With co-owner Cameron Silver, he turned Decades into a retail destination for celebrities and stylists, with carefully curated, in-demand pieces.
“I used to live at the top of Mulholland [Drive]. The whole cliché — the pool, parties galore,” said Garkinos. “I turned 50 and everything fell apart. I lost everything. I lost my marriage. I lost my sobriety.”
His finances had dwindled, and within four months he was living in a one-bedroom a few miles south. “I would walk out my front door and see my house at the top of the hill.”
Then came a chance encounter that changed his life: “I was down to my last $1,000. Someone asked me to host a dinner in Detroit. I thought, ‘How much? Great. I’ll go and pay my rent for the next month.’”
At the event he met the head of marketing of a Detroit hotel, who took him to breakfast the next day. “She asked how I was, and I said, ‘I’m just trudging my way through life,’” Garkinos continued. “Trudging is a big A.A. word. She’s like, ‘Are you sober? So am I. How can I help you?’ She literally set me up with all her hotels in these small markets, Omaha, Detroit, Minneapolis, for me to do my truck shows. If I hadn’t said that word, I wouldn’t be here today.”
He began paying off his bills, he said. “And then COVID happened. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I owed so many people money from consignment.”
But he acted quickly and took the business online in March 2020, growing through the years. With the book, he’s sharing lessons he’s learned along the way. “I’ve had a lot of pivots in my life, and so I wanted to talk about what to do when those pivots happen.
“You know what, in life, we have to go through some of those times to appreciate the wonderful times,” said Kathy Hilton. “It happens to everybody.”
She, like many in the room — including Beauvais, Selma Blair, Melanie Griffith, Karen Zambos and Monet Mazur (all in Etro) — met Garkinos during his days at Decades.
“He’s got such an eye,” Hilton said of his work. “He is fashion.”
“I think it’s about people feeling safe to shop with me,” Garkinos said of his online business. Now 60, he’s married to his third husband, Rolland Ryan.
“This book is a love letter to my parents, first, who were Greek immigrants, but secondly, a love letter to Los Angeles and Hollywood and that you can actually rewrite your story,” he added.
