Tucked into the corner of a boutique diagonally across the street from Oprah Winfrey’s studios in the West Loop is a piece of custom-made furniture meant to evoke the feeling of an open armoire, displaying several pairs of used shoes and lightly worn outfits in bright colors.
Among the assorted items on display earlier this week: black Prada heels, an orange Yves Saint Laurent skirt suit, a gold metallic blouse, Chanel boots.
A tweed skirt ($175, size 10) caught Lucretia Johnson’s eye.
“I remember this!” Johnson said, handling the skirt. “She wore it in the magazine!”
What makes these used items unlike the castoffs in an ordinary thrift shop is that they (a) are not thrifty and (b) are not ordinary. They once hung in Oprah Winfrey’s closet, so the tags say.
Johnson, a petite bank information processor from St. Louis, continued browsing.
“The pants are too long and the shoes are too big, but I will definitely be back for a sweater or a skirt,” she said. “I like shiny stuff and a lot of her stuff is shiny and vibrant.”
Oprah’s Closet is the most intriguing corner of what is otherwise a large souvenir shop newly opened to promote Oprah-inspired accessories and housewares. The secondhand section is like a pot of somewhat affordable gold for Winfrey’s devotees, who come from near and far for a chance literally to walk in her old shoes.
Mostly they cross the street after “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is finished taping, devouring all things Oprah, from tea sets to T-shirts, most emblazoned with some form of her signature “O.”
“This is the world of all the things she loves,” said Darcy Rogers, general manager of what has been named the Oprah Store. It joins her TV show, magazine, radio show and Web site in extending Winfrey’s commercial reach and cultural influence.
Oprah’s Closet usually features about 20 hand-me-downs, ranging in size from 10 to 14, and in price from $50 (a pair of Banana Republic pants) to $500 (Yves Saint Laurent suit). The shoes are sizes 10 and 11. The Prada heels were listed at $250, about half of what they cost new. A pair of orange and brown Bruno Magli sandals were $225; they went home with a delighted Ellen Au-Yeung of Oakland.
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While the items in Oprah’s Closet are not exactly steals, the store’s clerks described the prices as fair. And then there is the provenance, said store regular Barbara Jean Hoy of Chicago.
“The feeling is, Oprah had this on, and now, I’m wearing it?” Hoy explained. “When you go in there, you just feel great, like you are somebody, like Oprah is touching you.”