Lee Starkey ·
In the spring of 1990, she met Christian Paris, who owned a Psychedelic-themed club called “Alice in Wonderland” in the basement of Gossips club in London’s Soho. This club had a strong goth connection. Christian Paris had opened a boutique selling the kind of fashions that the psychedelic and goth crowd at the club would wear, it was a successful boutique named “Planet Alice” that had been operating from 284 Portobello Road, London. The fashions sold there were vintage 60s clothes and psychedelic-influenced 1960s and 1980s-style fashions designed for the boutique. He had already sold the premises by spring of 1990 when Lee asked him to take her as a business partner, “because she had always wanted to get involved in fashion and seeing as how Planet Alice was her favourite shop it would be perfect” as he recalls in his 2011 book “A Pretty Smart Way to Catch a Lobster”, but he was selling the clothes wholesale while looking for new premises to keep the retail side again. Lee persuaded Christian to relocate to Los Angeles where her mother was now living with husband Isaac Tigrett, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and House Of Blues chains. Christian Paris explains: “It soon became obvious that the idea of opening in L.A. where Isaac and Maureen lived for most of the year, came from Isaac and not from Lee. Isaac was under pressure from Maureen to spend more time in the UK close to her children, Lee, Jason and Zak, as well as Zak’s kids [sic.], her grandchildren. Isaac thought that if Lee and Jason would move out to L.A. Maureen would be happier. Isaac sold the idea to me, saying that he loved the whole concept and as well as the shops he would look into the possibility of helping us to open Planet Alice restaurants, Hard Rock style with a psychedelic theme”. The young couple moved in with Lee’s mother and stepfather while they created the new shop and found places of their own. Christian designed the shop’s artwork for the walls, and Lee, Jason and Maureen helped paint the shop in the psychedelic style, and Maureen was persuaded to work in the shop one day a week as a sales assistant. In May 1991 the new boutique opened at 7223 Melrose Avenue, stocked with Lee’s “90s interpretations of 60s styles” which were soon splashed across various fashion magazines. At the official opening of the store, situated on Melrose Avenue, Ringo and Barbara and Maureen and Isaac were in attendance. During the year, Lee moved into a house in Beverly Hills which she shared with her brothers, Jason and Zak, her mother, step-father, and half sister, Augusta.
Age: 20 - 22
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