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"How many times have you checked out another girl&amp;#x27;s outfit and then mentally &amp;quot;pinned&amp;quot; everything she has on? Guilty as charged! So, instead of standing idly by making mental Pinterest boards, I decided to ask some women I find irresistibly chic to give me a peek into their homes and closets. This week, we hit the road and headed up to the City by the Bay, San Francisco, to visit their arbiters of style. First up, the impeccably cool Rati Sahi, VP of merchandising for TheRealReal, an online luxury resale shopping mecca. Rati, who owned her own boutique, Anica, in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, met TheRealReal&amp;#x27;s CEO Julie Wainwright in 2011 through a mutual stylist friend. Two short weeks later, she shuttered her doors to join her and start up the site. She says, &amp;quot;I used to have 30 to 50 people come into my store every day. Now, we&amp;amp;#8217;ve got 1.5 million members on the site, and thousands who visit every day. It&amp;amp;#8217;s a whole new level.&amp;amp;#8221; With 30,000 products in their warehouse at any given time, and a thousand new pieces arriving each day, Rati oversees editorial and merchandising of every piece they sell on the site. Rati invited us into her brand-new home in Hayes Valley (she moved in a few months back with her husband and baby) and spilled her secrets to owning a wardrobe filled with designer finds without spending a fortune. Rati on her stoop, sporting a Prada coat, Balenciaga pants, Zara top, and Miu Miu shoes Best practices for buying consignment: &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s best when you are not looking for something specific. Instead, buy when you love something, and then you will always have something to wear.&amp;quot; The chicest hanging rack, with a vintage jean jacket, Pierre Hardy bag, and more When to purge items in your closet: &amp;quot;When you haven&amp;#x27;t worn it in six months, or if you just bought it, and you are not excited to wear it. I edit my closet every quarter, if not more. It&amp;#x27;s cleansing for me. &amp;quot; Rati in her bedroom, in an Alexander Wang T-shirt, Cheap Monday jeans, and Balenciaga sneakers Her fashion pedigree: &amp;quot;I took a year off in college and went to Florence to study art history. After graduation and a couple of odd jobs, I worked as a buyer at a boutique in San Francisco before eventually opening my own store. I met Julie two and a half years ago and thought she had a brilliant idea from what I saw happening in consignment clothing.&amp;quot; Her Chanel bag perched upon a horn-detailed love seat she kept from Anica, with collected magazines and art Her closet philosophy: &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;#x27;t have a big closet. I buy things I love, and then sell them once I tire of them to get some money back. It keeps my closet fresh. Plus, my husband has more clothes, so has the bigger walk-in closet!&amp;amp;#8221; Behold, the closet! She describes San Francisco style as: &amp;quot;Lots of layering, effortless, and ladylike when dressed up.&amp;quot; Rati&amp;#x27;s shoe collection, neatly spilling out of her closet Her style is: &amp;quot;Modern, minimal and tactile. I appreciate luxurious fabrics.&amp;quot; The bedroom mantle, adorned with vintage jewelry Her current obsession: &amp;quot;Banana leaves...maybe it&amp;#x27;s because it&amp;#x27;s always overcast in SF, and they remind me of being somewhere tropical!&amp;quot; Her home mirroring her fashion choices, Rati wears a Christophe Lemaire banana-leaf dress, with real banana leaves by her side Favorite place to shop for home decor: &amp;quot;I love antique shopping in Sebastopol, which is about an hour north of San Francisco. Some of my favorite things in my home are from there, and it&amp;#x27;s very affordable compared with many places in the city. And there is this great place to have lunch to get your energy going before you shop!&amp;quot; The charmingly rustic kitchen in her new home On going digital: &amp;amp;#8220;People used to come into the store from the tech and banking world and say &amp;amp;#8216;I want to open a store. How do you do this?&amp;amp;#8217; And I thought: How do you do what YOU do?! There is this romanticized view of what it&amp;amp;#8217;s like to own a small boutique, and it is great, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s really hard too.&amp;amp;#8221; Her Miu Miu pony hair pumps hanging in the guest bedroom Fun fact: Everything Rati wears in the piece was purchased from TheRealReal, with the exception of the Cheap Monday jeans and the Zara top. The site offers free pickup of luxury items in 15 cities in the U.S. What have been your favorite resale or vintage purchases? Best steals?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2013/09/chic-peek-takes-san-francisco>