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Vallejo’s Boutique Classique — retro fashion for the modern woman

5/25/2016

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This is a reprint from the Vallejo Times-Herald article by Rachel Raskin-Zrihen, published on Thursday, October 15, 2015

​There’s a lot that’s unusual about the personal and professional partnership between Beth “Serenity” Holzman and her husband, Joel Lawrence Holzman — and the fact that they think they must have known each other in a previous life is only part of it.

The married couple’s latest venture — Boutique Classique, a Modern Vintage Clothing Store at 1711 Sonoma Boulevard, near Georgia Street — opened for business Aug. 29.

The idea for the store grew out of the couple’s other operation, Joel Holzman’s glamor and pinup photography business, Serenity Lawrence Studios, LLC, in the Glen Cove Marina area, they said.

A former Hollywood celebrity photographer, Joel Holzman, 68, moved his studio north after going back to school, earning a masters degree and joining the Peace Corps. The couple met in Berkeley during a photo shoot, they said.

“This is a little spin-off of that,” Serenity Holzman said. “Specializing in pinup and glamour, we find that (the necessary) clothes aren’t automatically in everyone’s closet.”

Now, it can be.

Boutique Classique carries fashions inspired by those of the 1920s through the 1950s — decades close to the couple’s hearts.

“It’s my love — I’ve always been a ’30s and ’40s sort-of person,” Serenity Holzman, 30, said. “It’s a passion of mine.”

Her husband, on the other hand, describes himself as a “’40s guy.”

“I just love the films, the actors, the photography,” he said. “I’m a fan of the whole era. I always liked the glamor calendars my grandfather had” — a collection he credits with setting him on his career path.

Serenity Holzman’s been a pinup model, in that vein, for about five years, though she’s been modeling since age 16, she said. It’s how the couple met, they said.

“Even as a child, I’d play imaginary dress-up,” she said. “I enjoy beautiful things and this type of fashion is classy and timeless in its own way. I like the class and elegance it gives.”

Besides dresses, skirts, pants and tops, the boutique also carries shape-ware, girdles, garter belts, hosiery, bathing suits, jewelry and other items designed to look like they came out of an old Life Magazine.

An Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe fan, Serenity Holzman said she surrounds herself with retro memorabilia at home, as well as at work.

“I’ve always been a retro lover,” she said. “The original retro items are hard to find, especially in all sizes. This way, we’re able to carry everything in sizes from small to 4-X in most garments and to 5-X in the shape-wear.”

Prices range from about $30 to $180 and even higher for some of the more elaborate 1920s-inspired “flapper” dresses.

Holzman said she believes her store is unique in the number of brands offered in one place. Labels carried include Steady, Stop Staring!, Tarnia Tarantino, Leg Avenue, Unique Vintage and Rago.

“These clothes make me feel sexy and modest at the same time,” she said. “I love the great material most of it is made from; it conforms nicely to your body. The clothes are made for curvy women.”

The couple said they hope one day to join the photo studio and the boutique in one location.

Boutique Classique is open Thursday and Friday 2 to 6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. or by appointment. For information, call 641-1231 or visit www.boutiqueclassique.net.

Contact Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824.

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Photographer to the stars now shoots glam in Glen Cove

5/25/2016

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This is a reprint from the Vallejo Times-Herald article by Rachel Raskin-Zrihen, published on 11/3/15.

​What do Neil Patrick Harris, Pierce Brosnan, Patrick Swayze, Don Johnson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mario Lopez and Vietnam, Africa, the Amazon jungle, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Israel and North Africa have in common? They’ve all been photographed by Vallejo resident Joel Lawrence Holzman and appeared in various local and national publications. And this is only a partial list, he says.

The New York native said he’s been living life through a camera lens since childhood.
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“I picked up my dad’s camera at an early age,” said Holzman, proprietor of the Serenity Lawrence Studios, LLC at 150 Glen Cove Marina Rd., Suite 100. “I got my first camera as a gift from an aunt when I was 10 and got a better one at 13. By the time I was 15, I was on the school paper and yearbook.”

Holzman, 68, said taking photos was and is his creative outlet.

“It was a way of expressing myself,” he said. “I couldn’t draw, I’m not an athlete, but picking up a camera and shooting gave me a lot of satisfaction, and being involved with the school paper and yearbook gave me a sense of belonging.”

But, Holzman said he didn’t try to make a living with his camera until much later.

“I was a carpenter, a cabbie, a truck driver for a moving company,” he said. “The first picture I had published was of a free concert by Jefferson Starship, whose publicist was a client of the moving company. I gave them a few of my shots, and they wound up in the Chicago Tribune. They sent me a check for $75.”

Holzman’s life adventure landed him at least once on the other end of a historical photo, when his image appears in Rolling Stone’s Woodstock edition, he said.

“I was 21 or 22,” he said. “I was in it with my girlfriend at the time. It was pretty great.”

In his late 20s in 1975, Holzman moved to San Francisco to try and make a living out of his avocation, he said. A shot he took of Calistoga’s mayor drinking a bottle of water, wound up used in an ad campaign and Holzman said he started to believe he could really make a go of a career.

When he realized his passion was really with taking glamour shots of women, Holzman moved to Los Angeles, he said.

A request to take a photo of Calista Carradine, daughter of actor David Carradine, at their home, led to his taking some shots of the actor, which were published in a magazine, he said.

​“Because of that, a company called ‘Shooting Star’ asked permission to publish the photos overseas and that sort-of got the celebrity photography thing going,” he said.

Throughout the 1980s, Holzman said he was kept busy shooting photos for soap opera and teen magazines, and also publications like US magazine.

“So, all of a sudden, I found myself shooting celebrities,” he said.

“Like the poster for the ‘Doogie Howser’ TV show, and Pierce Brosnan for (TV’s) ‘Remington Steele,’” said Holzman’s wife of about two years, Beth “Serenity” Holzman, 30. A model who helps her husband with his studio, she runs a vintage-like clothing store on Sonoma Boulevard near Georgia Street in downtown Vallejo. The couple has lived here since 2011. “He also shot the whole cast of ‘Saved by the Bell.’ The list just goes on and on. He’s also done a lot of red carpet work.”

Joel Holzman said he enjoys the challenge of photography, particularly of creating old-fashioned pinup girl, glamour-type shots of women — even ones who’s innate glamour is not immediately obvious.

“The inner beauty of women comes to the surface from what they feel inside, and I can capture the inner essence,” he said. “I’m good at it.”

​Holzman said that between photography gigs, he earned a degree in marine sciences and found he also enjoys photographing primates and exotic landscapes.

“I was in Africa with the Peace Corps — an original Sargent Shriver Peace Corps site, where I built fish ponds, but I was also asked to photograph the schools and other cultural sites there. So when I went back to school for my master’s degree in visual and physical anthropology, I drew on my connections and experience there to photograph the gorillas,” he said. “I made a documentary on the lowland gorillas for my master’s.”

Most recently, in 2011, Holzman said he did a documentary on efforts to save the francois langur monkeys of Vietnam which are nearing extinction.

“He was trekking in the jungle, and he called me every day, saying things like, ‘I almost died today,’” Beth Holzman said.

“The guides were wearing flip-flops and I was in these (substantial) hiking boots, and they had a lot less trouble that I did (making our way through the jungles of Vietnam),” he said.
Holzman has shot birds in the Amazon and taken off on unplanned treks to South America and elsewhere — a habit he’s cut way back on since getting hitched.

​“When I met him, his house was a collage of his stuff, it was magical,” Beth Holzma said. “It was one of the things that made me fall in love with him. It showed his artistic ability; all his cards were out there.”

A self-described “Gypsy at heart,” Holzman said the adventure continues, albeit in a different way.
“I’ve never been married before,” he said. “I’ve never owned a home before. So this is an adventure for me.”

Contact Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824.

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(510) 978-2831 for Jean-Joel Lawrence

joel@serenitylawrencestudios.com

150 Glen Cove Marina Road, Suite 100

Vallejo, CA 94591
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