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Shareen Vintage’s Shareen Mitchell gets her own reality show

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Shareen Vintage, the quirky secondhand and vintage store with a “no boys allowed” policy, has been one of L.A.’s most influential fashion spots for years. Erin Fetherston, the designers for Marc Jacobs, Vogue’s Andre Leon Talley and the costumers for “Mad Men” are among the tastemakers who’ve pored over impeccably restored and reconstructed designs from bygone eras at the L.A. outpost (Mitchell opened a second location in New York last year that’s equally lauded by the fashion crowd.)

The store’s prominence is due to owner Shareen Mitchell, a former actress with an impeccable eye for trends. If you want to know what’s coming next in fashion — be it boho or Bauhaus — Mitchell’s usually right on the money in her predictions.

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And now the statuesque retailer is taking her work (and personal life) to the small screen. “Dresscue Me,” a new series that chronicles Mitchell’s day-to-day dealings, a la “The Rachel Zoe Project,” will debut on Discovery’s Planet Green network in early 2011.

Mitchell has been bombarded with requests to launch a reality series for years, but said, “I was finally approached by a production company [World of Wonder Productions] I fell in love with. They’re an incredible group of four fabulous men who flirted like crazy with me and made me surrender…I knew I would be doing something that would have weight and be quality –- and not be silly or demeaning.”

The series will document Mitchell helping women get dressed, but will also follow her on buying trips, which can range from visiting Podunk stores and people’s homes to excavating through 6-foot-high heaps of clothes in rag houses.

But Mitchell’s professional process only begins with buying; most items in her shops are altered by her team, sometimes beyond recognition. “I’m not particularly interested in vintage except in a way that it can be changed to compete with fashion,” she said. “The show will cover…how a vintage buyer takes these garments and makes them more fashion-friendly.’

For example, ‘Marc Jacobs did 1950s with Louis Vuitton, and it was so incredible and sexy. I look at it and go, ‘Yeah, I can do that. I have that. I’m wearing that right now.’ ‘

--Emili Vesilind

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