NEW YORK, NY.- Vintage-clothing aficionados are either pawing through piles of polyester looking for that one treasure, arms itching and aching ... or paying an obscene amount for something that the passage of time has made fragile, even if it doesn’t have sweat stains (and it might!).

Robyn Goldberg, owner of the Kit Vintage, shows a glamorous middle way. At her store on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, there are just a few racks, but what’s there, to quote Spencer Tracy in “Pat and Mike,” is cherce.

With the help of Goldberg, a special-occasions specialist who also does a brisk bridal business, you will discover the work of unjustly forgotten designers like Mary Ann Restivo, Bill Tice and Luis Estévez among the Vuitton and Versace. “Accessible vintage luxury” is the goal, she said. “I want someone to be able to come in and take it home and not just wish for it.”

Among her devoted regulars is Lou Eyrich, the costume designer who supplied the much-admired outfits for the FX series “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.” They included an ice-blue Swedish couture ballgown for Demi Moore as Ann Woodward and a silk lounge set for Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, both from the Kit Vintage.

“I call her, frantic: ‘This is what I need!’ And she sends the perfect Upper East Side elegant dress, perfect satin shine, perfect train,” Eyrich said on the phone between fittings for another production. “Thank you, Robyn!”

Goldberg and her husband, Larry Plotitsa (“that sweet, sweet husband,” Eyrich called him), proprietor with his sister, Natasha Tsimmerman of Platt Boutique Jewelry, have shared approximately 2,000 square feet of retail space for seven years: a mom-and-pop-and-aunt shop that could be the set of its own dramedy.

The businesses are separate but have been complementary ever since one fiancée, who’d come to Plotitsa for a ring, noticed one of Goldberg’s finds, a 1970s Saks Fifth Avenue number hand-painted with lions and tigers, and bought it for her engagement party.

“They loved big cats,” Goldberg said. There are worse quirks.

The couple were sitting on the Platt side of the store on a recent sunny afternoon as their daughter, Edie, 7, played dress-up with a pair of mismatched marabou boudoir mules. (They also have a son, Shaya, 12, and two Boston terriers, Gizmo and Buda.) A liquor cart twinkled dangerously in the corner.

They grew up in Chicago and met in high school but didn’t date till after graduation, when Plotitsa was toiling for his father in that city’s diamond district, thinking he’d become a bar or club owner.

“Because he was, like, a raver,” Goldberg said.

“I was in the scene in the ’90s!” Plotitsa said.

After Goldberg moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, planning to become a buyer, he visited for a while but then broke up with her on voicemail and ignored her messages.

“What’s it called now? Ghosting,” Goldberg said.

“I was 19!” Plotitsa said. “I was like: ‘She’s living there, I’m living here, I’m 19!’”

Three years later they got back together and have been partners in work and life ever since: finishing each other’s sentences, sharing each other’s customers and encouraging each other’s splurges.

“He’s the only person, to this day, that I want to shop with,” Goldberg said.

She worked for designer Anna Sui and laddie magazine Maxim before becoming the fashion editor at Teen People. Plotitsa contributed a custom-made gold necklace for Nelly, the rapper, to one of her layouts.

“Cut to, the politics of the editorial world starts getting gross,” she said, referring to the publisher’s habit of telling the staff what to shoot. She quit and became a freelance stylist in Los Angeles, with mixed results: “I’m shopping and shopping, and schlepping and schlepping.”

Meanwhile, Plotitsa got his gemology degree, turned down a job in the estate department of a big department store and, with Tsimmerman, opened a tiny booth next to a vending machine at the Antiquarius Center, a fancy antiques emporium that has since burned down, before expanding to a bungalow on Robertson Boulevard.

Celebrities began coming in to get bling for their wingdings and have never stopped. Brendan Fraser had on an art deco platinum, sapphire and diamond brooch from Platt when he won an Oscar for “Whale” in 2023, and Monica Lewinsky wore earrings and a necklace from the store to this year’s Vanity Fair party.

“People gate-keep us,” Plotitsa said. “It’s their little secret. We’re priced fair, and they don’t want to share that. We’re not a Maxfield,” the haughty boutique on Melrose Avenue.

The internet’s fame sleuths, however, are not easily deterred. When Angelina Jolie’s daughter Zahara wore a gold-trimmed white Grecian gown from the Kit Vintage to the premiere of “Eternals” at the Rome Film Festival in 2021, hashtags bloomed like cherry blossoms in April.

Goldberg said she appreciates that the Jolies come in to browse themselves. She wrinkles her nose a little at working with celebrity stylists, who often want items for free and can be stingy with sourcing credit. Many red-carpet regulars, anyway, are beholden to their lucrative deals with fashion houses.

And yet modern designers regularly examine the couple’s offerings for inspiration, including John Galliano, whose brand the couple says is one of the most requested these days, over a decade since he was fired from Dior after an antisemitic rant in Paris.

“He’s actually really very nice,” Plotitsa said. “And we’re Jews.”

With sites like Depop and Etsy, a younger generation has cottoned to the idea that previously worn clothes are not icky or kooky but ecologically responsible. Many are rolling their eyes at the insane markups of traditional wedding vendors.

One bride-to-be recently spent $600 on a simple silk dress from the Kit that her artist friends could build a theme around at Burning Man; another, saying “I just want drama,” splurged on an open-backed iridescent “taffeta monstrosity” from Donna Karan’s 2005 fall runway for her rehearsal dinner for $2,500.

To properly showcase such treasures, Goldberg said she “manifested” occupancy of the current store, in a historical landmark building, after seeing a For Lease sign in the window.

“They were signing a cybercafe,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, that’s the wrong business for you.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.