If you care about the environment and owning heaps of awesome stuff in equal measure, the best possible thing you can do is to buy things second-hand. Designer clothing is a particularly savvy area in which to shop for used items, since the products tend to be better made in the first place, and to have been treated with more care by their original owners than high street wares.
Don’t be wary of buying used clothes. While a piece might occasionally be re-sold due to structural issues (hello unlined linen anything), more often than not, women – and particularly label-fans – sell clothes because of sizing, cash-flow or personal style issues.
Sadly in Australia, we have a dearth of bricks and mortar consignment stores. There are a few good options (the second-hand rack at Paddington’s Peopkeand its across-the-road neighbours Di Nuovo and Pelle shoes), but the internet is far more fertile ground.
While eBay has always been the home of used designer items, the eBay experience simply isn’t as tempting as those hallowed halls of e-tail whitespace at which one can purchase new clothing.
Fortunately as eBay moves away from the individual-seller toward a more bulk-retail model, a whole suite of online consignment and ‘re-commerce’ stores have opened in its wake, and many of them are very, very pretty looking.
Unfortunately, Vaunte does not yet ship to Australia, a fact I learned when I attempted to purchase a Chanel jacket from hilarious chick-lit author Jil Kargman. This website focuses on reselling the wardrobes of fashion insiders, and profiles the women whose clothes you’re buying. It’s like the most fabulous possible version of a garage sale, satisfying sticky-beak as well as consumer urges. Given it’s founded by two Gilt Group alumns and a start-up whizz, it’s likely to reach our shores soon. The site is spectacularly well laid out and curated – worth having a browse through even though you can’t buy without a US address.
While we wait for Vaunte, fortunately the savvy girls behind TheEdit.com.auhave very recently come up with an Australian equivalent. Unlike Vaunte, which flaunts its hawkers, The Editor’s Closet’s listings are anonymous. Right now I have my eye on a cream and black Bally shirt. There’s also plenty of Isabel Marant, Karen Walker and Miu Miu to peek at.
More DIY and less edited down than Vaunte and The Editor’s Closet, Material Wrld lets Australians shop, but not sell. It also has a social media element, allowing you to upload items you don’t plan on selling, so other browsers can get a better feel for your style. You have to arrange your own shipping with Material Wrld – just like with eBay – and since sellers can set their own prices, at the moment a lot of the users are madly overcharging. That being said, there’s plenty of good stuff to buy, and some of it is very reasonable.
This website is not messing around. If you want to drop $12,000 on a Birkin, this is the right place. The Luxury Exchange has a hardcore vetting process, and only sells ultra high end jewellery and accessories – not clothing. Based out of Hawaii, they are entirely un-cheap, referring to themselves not as a store but a ‘brokering service’.
Based out of Europe and hugely, hugely popular, Vastiaire Collective is like eBay with verification. There’s so much product on the site, you are better off searching than browsing, but this abundance comes with numerous advantages. For instance, Vastiaire is the only online second hand luxury store I found – out of the dozens I visited – where you could buy a Rick Owens leather jacket for under $1000. Vestiaire also has a great deal of edgier fashion options, and even occasionally lists items by season.