Real Talk: Brands Should Stop Reselling

It was sometime in those dog days of the pandemic when London-based Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto of the brand Jordanluca were stopped dead in their tracks by an email in their inbox. Surely, it had to be spam?

Hillary Taymour, founder of New York label Collina Strada, fished the email out of her junk folder the same day at 3 a.m. British designer Priya Ahluwalia received it, too, and was quick to dismiss it as an advert.

This email, ladies and gentlemen, was from Gucci. Taymour, Ahluwalia, and Jordanluca were among 13 emerging fresh faces of the fashion world participating in Gucci Vault, a “new experimental online space” and e-commerce platform showcasing Gucci archival pieces reimagined by said emerging designers, handpicked by creative mastermind Alessandro Michele.

Now, this wasn’t the first of Gucci’s collaborations—or “contaminations,” as the designer dubs them. Earlier that year, Michele’s maximalist motifs appeared on an assorted range of The North Face puffers and outerwear. Fall 2021 then presented a “mutual contamination” with fellow Kering label Balenciaga.

But there’s also something inherently elitist about calling a collaboration, especially one involving the secondhand space such as Gucci Vault, a “contamination.” Long looked down upon, the world of pre-loved luxury instills fear into the hearts and minds of heritage houses.

Like the ancient Greeks banning Spartans from wearing gold and silver, luxury’s longstanding pecking order has been put at risk by a steady influence of re-loved pieces invading the retail sector. And brands big and small are now rushing to get their hands on a piece of that pre-loved pie.

And to them I say, please stop!

Time Machine, Archive, Library, Laboratory

“Ten years ago,” writes Emilia Petrarca, “if I wanted to clean out my closet, I’d throw as much stuff as I could into a large Ikea bag and haul it on the L train to Beacon’s Closet in Williamsburg. Someone with a funny haircut would rifle through my things as I watched, only to serve me a deadpan diagnosis that everything I owned and once loved was basically worthless.”

Today, however, shoppers (and sellers) have a laundry list of resale sites to peruse, purchase, and sell on. Aside from the usual suspects like Fashionphile, Rebag, and The RealReal, as well as old-timers like eBay, Depop, and Poshmark with their misspelled listings and treasure-laden innards, Mulberry is ready to buy back your pre-loved wares in exchange for store credit.

Coach’s (Re)Loved program, which began in 2021, gives used and damaged products a second life and eventually led to the conceptualization and creation of Coach’s sustainable sub-brand Coachtopia. Coachtopia pieces are created with circularity in mind, crafting products from recycled, repurposed, or renewable materials.

Burberry has partnered on occasion with The RealReal, while Kering kool kids Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, and Alexander McQueen have invested in resale pilots with Vestiaire Collective. Drive around Milan, New York, LA, or Tokyo, and you’re likely to stumble upon outlets of Valentino Vintage, the brand’s store-credit program for secondhand wares.

Yet, few brand-owned resale initiatives remain as ambitious as Gucci’s. “We called it the Vault because a vault is a storage place for beautiful things,” chimes Michele, and the Gucci Vault is many different things at once: “a time machine, an archive, a library, a laboratory, and a meeting place.”

In short, it was the frenzied shopper’s fever dream.

To Resell or Not to Resell?

You see, Gucci Vault wasn’t just a resale venture. “I love old things; they are present in my life with contemporary things,” said Michele at the time. In the vault, upcrafted archival pieces coexisted alongside quirky Gucci trivia, digitally collectible Gucci Grail NFTs, even games and other “autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) through a series of sensorial triggers designed to stimulate the brain and elicit physical sensations.” 

“Why can’t a fashion house with a creative director also have space for expressive, aesthetic, and social contaminations?” he questioned.

Sadly, in keeping with the machinations of the luxury conglomerate, Michele’s experimental art-space for his contaminations and commentary collapsed after he departed from the brand, its cultural currency of cool collabs now replaced by the far more sterile Gucci Vintage: “the value of Gucci’s past.”

Elsewhere in the luxury world, brands have chosen to avoid resale altogether. LVMH’s attempts to position Stella McCartney as the sustainability ambassador of its brand lineup proved short-lived and lukewarm. Eventually, the head of the conglomerate Image and Environment, Antoine Arnault, concluded, “For the moment, we will stay away from that secondhand market.”

Chanel, on the other hand, launched staunchly into the offensive.

In a landmark verdict in February, the jury in the brand’s case against What Goes Round Comes Around found the reseller guilty of trademark infringement, false association, unfair competition, and false advertising, and liable for up to $4 million in statutory damages.

Prior to that, in a 2018 ruling against The RealReal (which alleged Chanel’s lawsuit was “nothing more than an alarmingly thuggish effort to stop consumers from reselling” and “trying to stop the circular economy”), Chanel emerged victorious, receiving $11.5 million in settlement for counterfeiting and false advertising by the TRR.

Interestingly, in a 2004 lawsuit between Tiffany’s and eBay, the court chose to side with the latter, citing that it had taken sufficient anti-counterfeit measures.

The Winners, the Losers, and the In-Betweens

“We want to retain control of our distribution,” declared Chanel’s President, Bruno Pavlovsky, “We’ve spent the last 20 years securing that control, so we’re not going to give it up now with partnerships in the secondhand market.”

“It’s important for our customers to be able to resell items, but we have decided not to be part of that process,” he added, choosing instead to double down on in-house repair efforts and cracking down on counterfeiters.

But whether they choose the resale route or not, the overarching motive for most luxury labels appears to be taking ownership of—or otherwise influencing—the mechanisms of the secondary market.

Because it takes charge of selling its own, pre-owned products, these heritage houses can access entry-level luxury buyers without alienating their current clientele (or reducing prices). The Fashion Law even reported in 2018 of retailers off-loading unsolved inventories in “resale” capacity. And resale is, at the end of the day, a lucrative destination, expected to reach $64 billion globally by the end of the year.

At the same time, though, owning (or limiting) even a fraction of their secondhand wares in circulation is likely to make them much harder to find through traditional resale channels. And control over their trademarks, at the end of the day, implies control over prices, which means those Old Céline or Tom Ford-era Gucci bargains are about to get a lot more expensive!

And this starkly contrasts with the traditionally buyer-dominated democratic domain of resale. A universe of joy, of scouring for hours in search of undiscovered treasures, where, Liana Satenstein writes, “perfectly red lacquered nails flipping up the tags of Dolce & Gabbana sweaters and Versace pants show the viewer that the item is indeed real.”

In “the harsh reality of the current luxury landscape is that new equals risky,” reselling its older wares – or reheating its own nachos, to use internet-speak, may provide heritage houses with a temporary way out of the luxury rut.

But they take the thrill out of the hunt over the longer term.  And that never bodes well for anybody!