From Detroit's Meat Town to L.A. Luxe: Christos Garkinos' Comeback Tour

Yahoo

27-03-2025

If you want to understand Christos Garkinos, start with the sign that hung outside his family's Detroit restaurant: "This ain't no Burger King. You get it my way, or you don't get the thing."Fast forward several decades and several thousand miles to Los Angeles, and that same irreverent spirit has powered the Greek American entrepreneur through the city's notoriously fickle fashion landscape—and one hell of a comeback.LA is a city that worships reinvention almost as much as it fears a fall and Garkinos has experienced both. After pivoting from Disney executive to Virgin Megastore marketing maven to Bravo TV personality, he built his reputation as the "Robin Hood of fashion," connecting celebrity closets with luxury-hungry customers through his LA boutique. When he landed on HSN, it seemed the Detroit kid had truly arrived.Then came the tumble down Mulholland—literally. From his party palace perched high in the Hills, Garkinos descended into a perfect LA storm: addiction, divorce, death of loved ones and financial ruin."Life became life," he says with characteristic bluntness. By 2016, he found himself in a one-bedroom by Target on Cloverdale and Fifth.In a city built on occasional artifice, Garkinos' rock bottom had a certain authenticity. On May 1,2016—"Mayday, literally"—he decided to get sober. Of course, getting clean meant, as his sponsor told him, facing everything he'd been tossing in the back seat: "You stop, and all the trash hits you, and you're buried."LA loves a third act almost as much as it loves a celebrity closet sale. After COVID shuttered his traveling trunk show, Garkinos did what any resourceful Angeleno would do: he went digital. His first Instagram Live, he says, attracted "eight people...five of them Russian bots, I'm sure."
But Garkinos showed up religiously at 5 pm every day and his audience grew, so much so that one day a Chanel dealer asked about paying to join his stream. That's when Garkinos had an epiphany: his Instagram page had become a modern-day QVC. These days, a variety of hosts go live on his page, selling selections from the closets of the world's biggest celebrities—people with last names like Aniston, Cox, Kudrow and Witherspoon.Today, Garkinos built a digital empire that's now crossed $100 million in sales. He's married to the 'love of his life,' influencer Rolland Ryan. And Garkinos' followers have formed such a tight-knit community that they've formed a 'Stos Squad' that travels together internationally.When Garkinos announced (on Instagram Live, of course) that his first book Covet the Comeback was available for pre-order, thousands of his fans flocked to buy it, driving the yet-to-be released book up to one of Amazon's top spots.Now that the book is out—complete with a blurb from Garkinos' best friend, Real Housewife Garcelle Beauvais—he's taking the ultimate comeback loop with book launch events at NeueHouse and Spago (presented by Etro), followed by a country-wide book tour. At the same time, his Instagram channel will continue to broadcast all day and through the night. As his dad surely would have said, Garkinos is doing it all his way.