PARIS — With 15 years under its stylish belt, luxury resale pioneer Vestiaire Collective is celebrating its anniversary with a curated drop of 250 pieces priced at under $15.
It will be a treasure hunt for buyers, with a Fendi Baguette bag, a Dior Saddle belt pouch, a Louis Vuitton Neverfull tote and a Bottega Veneta bag on offer, alongside items from brands including Gucci, Chloé and Burberry.
The move comes as the company continues to expand its work in growing the resale and circular fashion sector. The latter three brands are long-standing partners of Vestiaire Collective, which has helped to build the resale game over its decade-and-a-half in business as one of the first movers in the online resale market.
“We made circular fashion a big thing, and that’s what I’m very proud of,” cofounder and president Fanny Moizant claimed. “We’ve seen interest and desire for people to consume differently.”
Launched in 2009, Vestiaire Collective’s growth bears that out: revenue in 2023 was up 25 percent to 157 million euros, on 824 million euros of gross merchandise value. Moizant chalked up the increase to new memberships more than an increase in basket value.
The U.S. is now the French company’s largest market, representing more than 20 percent of its activity, and sales there were up 57 percent year-over-year since 2019. With chief executive officer Maximilian Bittner based in the U.S. since last September, the company is focused on continued growth in the region.
A recent storyline on Netflix’s “Emily in Paris” that involved Vestiaire is poised to further boost business. The episode resulted in a 30 percent increase in search. That was accompanied by “big, big spikes” of new registrations and listings, which jumped 30 percent in Europe and 42 percent in the U.S.
“We are very hopeful that maybe the hardest job has been done, and we are on the path to conquer that market and to be even more successful in the future,” Moizant said.
Globally the used clothing market hit $43 billion in 2023, up from $23 billion in 2018, and grew about seven times faster than the overall retail industry according to a recent study by platform ThredUp. With consumers increasingly aware of and open to resale, Vestiaire aims to continue to shift the sustainability conversation around fashion.
“The first 10 years were dedicated to growing the business, and at some point, we really focused on making sure the house was clean,” Moizant said. The company gained B Corp status and partnered with nonprofit The Or Foundation, among other milestones. Now Vestiaire’s bold mission is to change the industry itself.
Moizant and cofounder Sophie Hersan started with listing just 3,000 items, mostly sourced from friends and family — now the company has sold more than 12 million. Much of that haul is handbags, with Vestiaire tallying more than 2.6 million handbags sold over the years.
The company’s research indicates that 80 percent of secondhand purchases on Vestiaire are instead of a firsthand purchase, which means about 10 million new items not purchased. Their data shows that model has saved more than 300,000 tons of carbon emissions, and diverted more than 4,800 tons of raw materials and 2.9 billion gallons of water from use.
Kering’s investment in the company in 2021 was a “critical, massive step” toward industry acceptance, Moizant said, and represented a new way of thinking about the fashion system. If a luxury conglomerate can see the value in secondhand, brands and buyers could, too, the reasoning went.
Big names jumped on board as partners, including Gucci, Burberry, Chloé and Courrèges. Vestiaire also attracted high-profile, self-professed fans with Jessica Chastain, Jessica Alba and Kim Kardashian touting their use of the site.
Last year’s AI-generated ad campaign featuring piles of clothing in front of global landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and Times Square has been among the biggest successes in communicating the company’s message, Moizant said.
“The campaign was basically putting the problem of over-consumption and the waste [it creates] on your doorstep,” she said. It was a turning point for the company and more effective than showing mountains of waste in the dumps of the global south. Sustainability messaging walks a fine line between promoting your business without greenwashing, and educating without admonishing, she said.
“It was another step to touch them personally, and almost physically, to imagine, what if that waste was on my doorstep? That campaign went completely nuts, in a good way,” she said of its viral reach.
The next iteration will be the company’s continued forays into policy making, pushing to decrease the value added tax on commissions, which increases the prices for buyers of secondhand fashion, at the French and European Commission level. With affordability being top-of-mind for consumers, this is an increasingly important topic for Vestiaire.
“We’ve also involved lobbying in our thinking and to be even closer to our mission. In the last five years, while we were scaling, we were going even deeper into our mission and vision, while not forgetting who we are,” said Moizant.
The company is now planning an additional program with The Or Foundation, which works on changing the current fashion business model and focuses on clothing waste. Moizant said the next project will include bringing “another piece of the industry” to Ghana, which imports about 15 million items of secondhand clothing each week, causing extreme environmental impacts.
The third round of the company’s “fast fashion ban” — which included Asos, Boohoo, Shein and Topshop in its initial round in 2022, and expanded to H&M, Gap Inc., Mango, Uniqlo and Zara last year — will be revealed in early November.
The company signed on to a petition launched by American Circular Textiles group addressing taxation on resale earlier this summer, and is working on publishing an open letter on the topic of fast fashion before the end of the year.
“We are trying to move the needle…to make sure we have the biggest impact,” Moizant said about the company moving into more political action.
The new drop is intended to keep Vestiaire’s unique balance. “We really keep it in our DNA to be activist, but at the same time quite playful and quite engaging in the way we operate the business,” she said. “Vestiaire is very playful as a platform. This campaign is hitting both of those values.”
The drop will feature dedicated items for the Asia, Europe and U.S. markets. The selection will be available for under $15 (or pounds, or euros, depending on the region) and will go live worldwide at noon CET on Tuesday.
