Valentino launches vintage items resale project

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Oct 28, 2021

Valentino has launched its own resale project, to tap the growing interest for vintage fashion and the growing success of second-hand clothes sites. On Wednesday October 27, the Italian luxury label unveiled the Valentino Vintage project via a dedicated page on its website, where it lists the stores participating in the operation and explains the procedure customers will need to follow to be able to resell Valentino clothes and accessories they are no longer using.

The project is structured in two phases. In the first phase, anyone interested in the project needs to send a photo of the Valentino items they wish to resell.

Once they receive initial approval, they will need to have the items assessed in-store. At that point, the store will make an offer to buy back the items, in exchange for a shopping voucher valid at the Valentino stores taking part in the operation.

The second phase will begin in January, with the commercialisation of the vintage models collected.

The first list of vintage fashion stores selected by Valentino includes multibrand retailers like Madame Pauline Vintage in Milan, New York Vintage Inc. in New York, Resurrection in Los Angeles and Laila Tokio in Tokyo, as well as the label’s own flagships in these same cities.

To illustrate this initiative, the label led by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli has reinterpreted a number of logos adopting the aesthetics of the decades from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The Italian luxury label is not the first to convert to circular fashion. Valentino Vintage is indeed only the latest project announced in this field, in the wake of the recent ones by Jean Paul Gaultier and Gucci. The former was launched on the same day as Valentino Vintage on Gaultier's new e-shop, while the latter was launched in September on the dedicated Gucci Vault website. Isabel Marant deployed its own second-hand clothes website in June.

The leading fashion e-tailers have also thrown themselves into the second-hand market in recent months, from Zalando to Farfetch and Mytheresa, which teamed up with Vestiaire Collective, and Benetton with Depop.