In A Sea Of Designer Dupes, Tango’s Driss Lambaraa Remains A Vintage Icon
Driss Lambaraa arrived in New Zealand 34 years ago and soon became the go-to guy for vintage European fashion. At a time when so many retailers are playing it safe, Driss’s unapologetic love of glamour is a welcome reminder that there’s hope for fashion that thinks outside the box. He
Anyone who has visited Tango Vintage in Parnell will know it’s a store like no other.
Not just because you can try on a pair of Manolo Blahnik kitten heels while sitting on a red velvet couch from New York that looks like it belonged to The Jetsons. Or because even those with zero interest in fashion will find plenty to discover, from the jewel and sunglasses-stacked cabinet to the 19th-century tapestries on the walls to the lamps, vases and other European accoutrements around the room. Or because the interior has been painted in uplifting Moroccan hues, from sun yellow to terracotta pink and sage green, or that everywhere you look there are sequins and silks commanding your attention.
No, the main reason you’ll remember your visit is because of French-Moroccan owner Driss Lambaraa.
Most days you’ll find the former hospo star and model gliding around his shop floor with the poise of a dancer, or telling his motley crew of customers about the provenance of a Lanvin dress or a Parisien chandelier. Perhaps he’ll be draping an embroidered scarf over the back of a sofa, showing off a Victorian-era coat to someone procuring costumes for film or TV, or creating a fashion art gallery, hanging pieces by Thierry Mugler, Jacquemus or Roberto Cavalli on the wall.
He could be conversing in one of eight languages, picked up through a nomadic life living everywhere from France to Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Today, the ageless fashion fanatic is dressed in a relaxed pair of cuffed jeans, Christian Dior boots he’s had for 30 years and a Versace shirt with a loud classical print. A European fashion magpie, Driss has spent decades collecting special one-off pieces to sell at his treasure trove store, which for the past four years has been set downstairs in the iconic former hotel, the Exchange Tavern.
Before he came to New Zealand in the early 90s (his former partner is a Kiwi and his children grew up here), Driss was the founder of a fashion café called Casablanca in Austria that was frequented by celebrities, he says, Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Supremes among them.
“My customers in that time, they finished work at 4, 5pm or whatever,” he says. “They came to me, they went into the kitchen. They tried stuff on, they bought them of course. And then we put their old clothes in bags and they partied until six in the morning.”
Auckland must have seemed like a dull ghost town in comparison when he arrived and stood on a Parnell balcony not far from here, surveying his new city. But no, simply by virtue of the clothing he was wearing, the glitterati soon found him.
The owner of the nearby Café Birak just happened to be having a party that evening, he says, and would he be able to lend a helping hand? Driss says he turned up that night ready to work in a purple velvet suit, and people incorrectly assumed he was gay.
“The [café owner] said, ‘Wow, where did you get these clothes?’ I said, ‘That’s Europe’.”
He continued to work at the bar for several months, enjoying the vibe before eventually opening his own bar and a coffee shop. However, the lure of European fashion was never far away, so he started a market stall at the Viaduct.
From there he launched a vintage shop in Karangahape Rd’s St Kevin’s Arcade, where he stayed for six years, before relocating to a bigger location in Little High St. It was here, in the two-storeyed shop he renovated, complete with 1920s brass balustrade, that Tango Vintage cemented its reputation as the place to go for luxurious European finds on a shoestring. When Covid hit and designers began their exodus from the city, Driss relocated to Parnell, where he’s been since 2020.
Stocking the store has always been a labour of love. As well as regularly visiting Europe’s commercial fashion markets, Driss sources garments from his network of fashion collectors, women from Paris to Auckland who are sitting on wardrobe goldmines. Somehow he gets to know these fashion dilettantes, who’ve either moved on from their 1980s shoulder-padded suits or can no longer fit into their form-fitting Moschino dresses.
“I have to buy everywhere,” he says. “I can come to your house and then I see something. I say, ‘is it for sale?’ Something has to catch my eye. I don’t stock a lot of stuff, a lot of designers, a lot of print, because that’s not me. I have to love it. And it has to be fashion.”
A Japanese woman once offered to sell her husband’s high-end designer wardrobe because when they’d moved to New Zealand, he’d taken up skateboarding. Which begs the question, who buys this stuff in the land of the long white tee, jeans and sneaks?
“Anyone who loves fashion,” he insists. “Anyone who loves individuality, they don’t want to look like everybody else. Some are freaks! Some women have big, big money, they go mad when they see something. They don’t buy just one thing.”
One 70-something woman recently bought herself a pair of back-breakingly high stiletto Gucci heels – the kind of shoe you’d imagine Lady Gaga teetering along a red carpet in – purely to place on her mantelpiece and admire. He gets a lot of lawyers, he adds, corporate execs who want to look powerfully stylish in court wearing, say, a preloved Chanel suit for under $500, as opposed to forking out the original price of $15k+.
Despite still being able to offer his customers crazy bargains, vintage has exploded in popularity globally since Covid, and that has pushed up prices worldwide.
“It’s not like in the old days you go to the market and then you grab something for $5. It’s over because the whole world is doing it. There are so many shops online but not everyone has that knowledge – they call a lot of 80s stuff vintage, you know what I mean?”
Next on the horizon, Driss plans to celebrate Tango’s 30th anniversary, even though technically it’s been more like 34 years.
“I don’t feel like giving up because this is my passion,” says Driss, opening the red velvet ropes at the entrance to his shop, giving arriving customers the feeling they’re VIPs entering a glamorous boutique from the 70s.
“I wouldn’t know what else to do!”
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