After helping luxury brands to see the business opportunity in resale, The RealReal now wants to shift the industry’s views on scraps.
Next month, the company is rolling out ReCollection, a programme that transforms damaged or distressed garments into new luxury pieces. The first collection will launch 1 April with clothing provided by eight designers: Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, A-Cold-Wall, Dries Van Noten, Jacquemus, Simone Rocha, Ulla Johnson and Zero + Maria Cornejo. The second collection, featuring upcycled loungewear, will be released later in April. The goal is to keep more clothing out of the waste stream, as well as have a more meaningful environmental impact by prioritising quality and longevity.
“This is a really exciting moment for The RealReal to expand our efforts and take a stake [in] the unusable materials that are from luxury pieces and should also have a second life,” says Allison Sommer, The RealReal’s senior director of strategic initiatives.
Sustainably minded designers, from Phoebe English to Gabriela Hearst, have already been using material scraps in their collections, but the trend has gained mainstream traction in recent months. More designers are casting an increasingly wide net for would-be waste materials that they can transform into clothes, from deadstock to worn garments that are damaged beyond repair. Swedish brand Fjällräven released a jacket and other products from upcycled materials earlier this month, French accessories brand Le Colonel started offering an upcycling service for old products, and throughout New York Fashion Week, The RealReal collaborated with emerging designers including Collina Strada and Imitation of Christ on their own upcycled collections.
The move by The RealReal to permanently embed upcycling into its business model reflects a longer-term commitment to not only a practice of repurposing scrap materials, but a mindset shift to reevaluate what is considered waste. The direct impact of upcycling luxury on fashion’s overall environmental footprint is likely to be minimal; it’s a small fraction of the total marketplace. But the hope for The RealReal’s head of sustainability James Rogers and participating designers is that the ripple effects could be significant.
“As a designer, I think it’s the biggest compliment for your designs to have an afterlife — to me, that is luxury,” says Stella McCartney. “This is one way the industry can tackle its enormous waste problem. We see the world crying out for change.”
Creating newness from waste
While resale is touted as an avenue for sustainability because used items inherently have a lower footprint than new ones, it’s also been found to fuel sales in the primary market, because more people are willing to pony up for a new luxury item if they think they can resell it later. But Rogers thinks that instead of those shifts increasing total volumes, it’s a displacement effect. Consumers, he says, are trading up.
“We do have data to show that our customers are actually buying luxury fashion in the resale market as a replacement for fast fashion,” says Rogers, explaining that an increase in luxury resale could have a rising-tide effect on customer behavior on the whole. “It is introducing them to this new market, but it’s moving them away from items that are made less sustainably and aren’t made to last as long.”
The RealReal established criteria for ReCollection to retain the spirit of sustainability in which upcycling is rooted: no virgin materials can be used, assembly must be zero waste, fair wages must be paid and production must be based in the US. As ReCollection grows, The RealReal plans to develop a library of leftover scrap materials that can be used in future collections. The company expects that the addition of upcycled garments, with their inherent uniqueness, will help to expand the resale market further.
Matteo Capellini, associate partner at Bain & Company, says it’s an interesting move that offers both material and reputational benefits — but is no silver bullet. “The problem is the scalability, because it’s one by one. It’s good for storytelling,” he says. “It’s not going to move the profit-and-loss economics of the industry.”
The economies of scale will emerge with time, says Rogers. He also thinks resale and upcycling can be expanded to more of fashion, including mid-market brands. That’s his and Sommers’ real hope — that consumers, whether they’re buying luxury or not, will increasingly focus on quality and durability in fashion, if only to be able to resell it later, and stop viewing clothing as disposable.
“We hope [increased resale] will have an effect in less upstream production for those items that don’t have a secondary market, that can’t be resold because of quality or desirability,” says Sommer. “The whole industry really works together in terms of, ‘Let’s produce a thing that can live on, whether it’s with the original buyer or someone else.’”
To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
Suppliers bore the brunt of the pandemic. Now they’re taking action
Can an end-to-end sustainability standard change fashion?
Brands are adopting regenerative agriculture. Is that a good thing?