Cameron Silver shops like he's going into battle. "I'm on a mission," the 28-year-old whispers gravely as we enter New York's Metropolitan Vintage Show, the chicest vintage-collector's fair in the U.S. "Oscar dresses! Golden Globe glamour! Rock 'n' roll for Marilyn Manson! Glam!" Then his pale, narrow face starts to look lovelorn as he adds, "and a gift-for the other Cameron" (Diaz, that is).

A year after he abandoned his career as a singer, Silver's store, Decades, has become a daytime club for Hollywood's celebrity elite. Stocked with the cream of the sixties and seventies designers, the Art Deco-style store on Melrose Avenue is an Aladdin's cave of meticulously presented, modernist chic.

Silver's shopping tactic is to yell, very loud, "Gucci? Pucci? Fioricci?" every third step. "Any killer floor-length? For the Oscars? Anything sexy-sexy-sexy? Halston? he calls as he stops in at the Green Parrot, a booth crammed with fifties couture dresses by Worth and Patou. Over the next three hours, Silver picks up a leopard coat for Rose McGowan; a distressed, fur-lined leather jacket for Marilyn Manson; a black denim silver-studded jacket that he'll show to Michelle Williams; a sixties pony-skin skirt suit that's  "got Téa Leoni written all over it"; a Rudi Gernreich dress that Marcia Gay Harden will wear to a premiere; a red suede Gucci bag with Gs the size of saucers as a clasp, which he'll save for Tom Ford; a Missoni knitted peasant top for Lisa Eisner; and precisely nothing for Ms. Diaz.  He's spent $6,000. He eyes a $450 Pucci hipster bikini-total Diaz wear, I suggest. "Yeah, she'd look fabulous in it," he sighs. "But I feel weird giving a girl briefs."

Silver seems deflated, despite his acquisitions. The elusive gift for the woman who has everything has failed to materialize. Just as we're leaving, Silver spies a pile of lilac-and-navy Pucci-print beach towels. With labels. "This is it!" he says. "She's going to die for them. I mean, how original is it to hang out on a Pucci towel?" Even with his mission accomplished, Silver can't stop shopping. He pulls a bright orange Pierre Cardin shift from the depths of a rail of polyester shirts. "It looks a little big," he says to the booth holder. "Are all your clients a size 4?" she replies. "Yeah. This is L.A."