AN ANNIE FLANDERS ABRACADABRA ARCHIVE. Annie Flanders' remarkable career bega...

The Collection of Annie Flanders
AN ANNIE FLANDERS ABRACADABRA ARCHIVE.
Annie Flanders' remarkable career began as a buyer at various New York retail outfits before going into business for herself, opening Abracadabra, a shop on the upper east side that featured cutting edge fashions from emerging designers. The shop soon became a place to see and be seen, and customers included Mia Farrow, Barbra Streisand, and other hip New York celebs of the period. This lot features photographs, artwork and ephemera from the Abracadabra period of Annie Flanders' life, including:

Box 1: Abracadabra opening press release, March 8, 1967 announcing the shop as belonging Marcia "Micki" Weinraub; a blueprint of store layout, 1/6/67; a printed invitation to an early Abracadabra fashion show on woven fabric; a group of press clippings; a 1970 financial report for the store (operating at a loss); a large collection of photos of shop fashions, prepared for publication, 8 x 10 and larger sizes, plus color slides.

Box 2: Abracadabra client signature book, 1967+; a large group of 8 x 10 inch (203 x 255 mm) black-and-white photos of fashion shows plus contact proofs and slides; approximately 50 pen-and-ink costume designs by Kadis, 355 x 280 mm; Abracadabra's client mailing address book; a large group of tracing paper fashion designs, unsigned; slides of Abracadabra II opening fashion show; press releases, newspaper clippings and magazines in which stories about the shop appear.
Marcia Weinraub (1939-2022) was born in the Bronx. As a young woman, she studied fashion and journalism at NYU (and won the 1959 Miss NYU pageant!) before launching a career as buyer for various department stores. In 1967 she opened her own store on the upper east side, Abracadabra, a funky boutique specializing in new and avant-garde designers. She met Chris Flanders, an actor, and though they never married, she took his last name and also changed her first name when he suggested she was more of an "Annie" than a "Marcia." Abracadabra ran for a few years, then Flanders moved to Ethiopia to oversee a leather manufacturing enterprise. In 1976 she was hired as the Fashion Editor for the Soho Weekly News, a newspaper designed to rival the more popular and famous Village Voice. The Soho News shut down in 1982, and with $6000 of her own money, Flanders started Details with many of her Soho News staffers. Details was to be a diary not just of a neighborhood, but of the whole city--its nightlife, restaurants, art, music and fashion scenes. It's motto? "A party in a magazine." The magazine published monthly (rather than weekly, like the Soho News) and featured photography from some of the most important photographers working at the time: Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, Amy Arbus, Patrick McMullan—and Flanders' very close friend, Bill Cunningham. Cunningham is best known for his long association with the New York Times but Flanders first gave him the most freedom of any editor.

Details caught on with its audience but never found financial stability. Flanders sold out to an investor in 1986, who then sold the magazine on to S.I. Newhouse in 1988. She remained as Editor-in-Chief for a short period before being pushed out altogether. Then, the publisher made the head-scratching decision to turn Details into a men's magazine before the entire project was shut down in 2015.

Flanders' post-Details career included co-sponsoring the Love Balls of 1989 and 1991, and a later move to Los Angeles where she continued to write and consult until her death in 2022.