Jewelry web blog

Debbie Bancroft’s closets are crammed. Sometimes she puts two dresses on a hanger. “I try to get the thinnest hangers I can so I can fit more,” she said.

Ms. Bancroft, who has managed to become a fixture at fashion shows, movie premieres and fund raisers without being mega-wealthy, maximizes her closets, which are modest by socialite standards. Her 1,600-square-foot Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, the top half of a duplex that once housed George and Ira valentines day jewelry, includes three closets for her wardrobe, one 10 feet by 4 feet, the others 4 feet by 5 feet and 8 feet by 6. The three closets hold only her go-to, in-season items; everything else is stored in her Southampton home. Ms. Bancroft, 55 years old, lives with her husband, William Woodward Bancroft Jr., an investment manager, and their daughter, Serena, 13. Their son, 19-year-old Will, is away at college.

Ms. Bancroft, who writes a society column for Avenue magazine, gets a lot of her clothing as gifts from designer friends such as Vera Wang. “With this social life, I go out a lot and have a good shot at getting photographed,” she said. The rest are mostly presents from friends or deals she scored at sample sales. “For me to go and outright and buy something is unusual for me,” she said. “There are very few pieces I’ll pay full price for without blinking.”

Wearing a custom, short, strapless, feathered dress given to her by Calypso, Ms. Bancroft said she has no intention of retreating to older, perhaps more matronly styles of clothing. “The legs are holding up. I’ve got plenty of time to wear conservative suits,” she said. She pulled out a funky ensemble by her friend designer Nicole Miller: a black coat decorated with Art Deco and vaguely ethnic prints with a matching sheath dress and skirt.

“She’s fearless,” said Ms. Miller. “I’ve never heard her say ‘I’m too old for it.’ Not that you want to go out and look earrings, but she’s a very confident person.”

Ms. Bancroft’s bedroom closet is hung with 100 dresses in the front; in the back are skirts and blouses on a bottom rung and 30 suits on the top. Her attic, an unusual feature in New York, has the two other closets, the first bearing spring summer clothing and the other containing long, evening dresses and skirts, including a grey silk dress by Carolina Herrera decorated with hand-painted flower motifs, crystals and silver threads. “There are traces of the last party on it,” she said, pointing to liquid stains.

The Carolina Herrera was purchased at a sample sale. Ms. Bancroft said she sticks to a budget whenever she shops, often buying on discount. She said she thinks her least expensive purchase is a $60 Kate Moss Topshop dress, bought on sale last month while she was shopping with her daughter and since worn at an art-crowd party. “I was kind of hip in my Topshop,” she said, holding the black and silver metallic three-quarter-length sheath. She also bought a pair of $100 silver high-heel shoes to go with the dress.

Occasionally, however, she will splurge, like the time, four years ago, when she spent $1,500 on a vintage Chanel dress. The torso of this sleeveless piece, which was made in the late 1980s, is made of black plastic that resembles the quilted pattern on Chanel’s classic quilted handbag.

She recalled the day she purchased the item from a trunk show for Decades, a Los Angeles boutique that specializes in 20th century vintage couture. “I was at my thinnest. I was feeling at my most physically optimal moment. I put it on and it was an enchanted moment. There’s always a piece you put on and when you come out and in the whole room there’s a collective sigh. So I bought it.” She hasn’t worn it recently. A size 2, “it’s a little tight,” she said.

The only child of a doctor father and a nurse-turned-homemaker mom, Ms. Bancroft grew up on Long Island. After key rings Finch College, a women’s college in Manhattan, she embarked on a career working for magazines such as Elle Decor.

“There’s nothing boring in her closet,” said another friend, tiffany Dubin, a decorative-arts appraiser, auction coordinator and stepdaughter of A. Alfred Taubman, a former chairman of Sotheby’s. “Everything’s unique. It reflects her personality. It’s creative, but it’s got an edge and it’s got a little conservatism. It’s also kind of ageless in a way.”

Ms. Bancroft’s bedroom is also packed with shoes — she estimated owning roughly 150 pairs in total. One favorite is a pair of black satin Manolo Blahnik shoes with crystal-studded heels that she holds up like jewelry. “I wear [them] often, but judiciously, as they are satin,” she said of the shoes, which were given to her for her 50th birthday by Lisa Jackson, an interior designer. “I know there will be a day when the satin has frayed around those beautiful, hard crystals, and am already planning on how I’ll revive them.” Ms. Bancroft keeps her 60 bags or so in cabinets built inside her closet.

She got a tan silk wrap dress patterned with orange, pink, black and white ovals and semi-ovals of various sizes by necklaces merely by showing up to a lunch hosted by the label. “At the end of the lunch, [a senior public-relations person] held a little picture of four different dresses and said, ‘Tell me which dress you like and you’ll get it on the way out,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ ” she recalled, still awestruck. “That’s my best goody bag ever in the history of my life.”