Keeping Khloé Kardashian and Chiara Ferragni current: meet sourcing gurus Gab Waller, Jennifer Nisan and Sourcewhere’s Erica Wright – who scour the world to find the most desirable designer pieces
- Celebrities Cara Delevingne, Sofia Richie Grainge, Lori Harvey, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Shay Mitchell and Annabelle Dexter-Jones all have a secret – they rely on style gurus to scour the world for vintage fashion pieces
- Past favourites selling well include Fendi Feel suede and shearling slides, Alaïa mesh ballet flats and the sequinned Fendi Baguette bag touted by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City
Gab Waller had her eureka moment five years ago, when she was visiting Los Angeles and perusing the city’s luxury fashion boutiques.
“I thought, Oh they have so much stock here that I know Australia doesn’t have – and [that] I could bring those pieces to the Australian market,” remembers Waller, who was based in Sydney and working as a stylist at the time. She returned to the southern hemisphere with a new-found goal: to source for her fellow Australians from the US and Europe. But half a decade on, her eponymous business is much more of an international operation than she initially planned.
The 15-person Gab Waller team, which includes 10 sourcing assistants scattered across the globe, has helped some 6,000 clients find their most-wanted luxury items, from new-season pieces (making up around 80 per cent of requests) to vintage and past-season items, which she refers to as “the ones that got away”.
With customers including celebrities like Sofia Richie Grainge, Khloé Kardashian, Lori Harvey, Chiara Ferragni and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (for whom Waller tracked down a Loewe suede and shearling coat), she’s built a reputation for helping some of fashion’s top tastemakers get their hands on the most coveted items.
The business has grown to the point that it can run without its namesake founder, and Waller now personally handles only around 10 per cent of requests. Even so, it’s a 24/7 operation with sourcing assistants strategically located to cover time zones, and Waller, who now spends much of her time in Los Angeles, mostly overseeing content and engaging with clients face-to-face. All conversations take place through Instagram DMs in a concerted effort to meet clients where they are.
“Each request is on a case-by-case basis, and we start with the designer,” says Waller, who, along with her team, will consider the regions the brand is more readily available in, the price point (a factor that typically favours Europe), brand relationships they can tap into, and time constraints – pieces that are sometimes needed for specific events or trips, for instance. “It’s a very speedy process,” she sums up.
Like Waller, New York-based Jennifer Nisan of the Instagram account FrontRowLive didn’t have sourcing mapped out as her career goal. Nisan was working in media in 2019 when she posted a photo of a limited-edition Gucci bag, and had a friend ask where she bought it. “I got the bag for her – I started calling every Gucci store in the country until I found it,” she says.