Live with Ana Andjelic

0:00Hi, everyone. Everybody. All right. So, hey, hi, Gauthier. Thank you for joining me from Paris. Hi. So, yeah, this is my dear friend. And I'm going to like him. I'm Anna Angelic of Sociology of Business. And for those who don't know me, I write about brands, cultural programming, cultural products, and business growth. So, welcome, Gauthier. Floor is yours. Hi, everyone. Hi, Anna. Thanks for having me. My name is Gauthier. I'm a fashion editor and stylist. I live in Paris. And I am also co-founder and creative director at the second-hand clothing brand, Sonoff. But you were here. You worked at Vogue.

0:44So, I mean... I did. So, yes. So, my background. I was market editor in menswear at American Vogue for 2013 and 2019. And I was assisting a stylist there. That's what's prepared me for my whole life as a creative director and stylist back in Paris in 2019. And today I've been freelancing, consulting for brands. And on the side of that, I have created a business, which is a brand, like a proper secondhand closing brand, which I'm sure we'll dive into in just a second. Just a second. But I want to quickly go back how you and I met, actually, which is not that long ago. I mean, online, yes, for a long time.

1:24but it's actually a very unique Labubu that went perfectly with your round floor and back. So we all owe to Labubu. But first, why I fell for your brand was actually because what makes it unique is that you're doing something very smart, which a lot of secondhand brands don't do. and those who read sociology business know that I don't write a lot about collecting and secondary marketplaces. You provide multiple units of the same style, which is where your styling background comes in. So let's dive a little bit deeper. Why is that good? Both for customers and for brands. Sure. So when we created a brand, we obviously wanted to use secondhand fashion as like a primary source of business because we came with a sort of concept that there's so much clothes in circulation right now.

2:25We don't need to produce any more clothing. This is not the answer and definitely part of the problem. So what can we do? Let's reuse what's in our hand. And we didn't dive into upcycling or changing the garments because we were very much into that philosophy that you just need to present the garment in a different manner, which means going through a dragging process and then being sold out in very good store very chic to good visual merchandising so the people realized that oh second hand is not so much thrifty as we know it and we really wanted to our mission was really to sort of convert a maximum of people that nowadays let's say they're all like ups or like 30 plus have a certain revenue and want to just consume better they just didn't have that answer and some of them still think uniqlo is eco-friendly because you know uniqlo is very good for the image um so at some point they were like okay we're done with zara we're done with this we're never gonna go to sheen or we're not gonna do a primark but second hand is giant market i don't know what to do with the market completely exploded i need help i need direction and budget-wise it's good And I was like, okay, well, we just need to accompany these people digitally and physically and take the thrift out of the thrift and put it into the department store or store.

3:46So that's what we did. And then the general idea of our company was basically to do, okay, people want direction. I'm a stylist. I have all two co-founders that are amazing, of course, but how can I bring my experience onto the field? and our first thought was like, okay, what's missing today is a clear vision on what the product is going to be when you enter a thrift shop. You enter a thrift shop, it smells, it's messy. It's just, it's going to be, you know, monoproduct. So you're going to have a rack of like a Hawaiian shirt and like wool coats or like leather jackets. But not only people don't really know where it comes from, they don't really know if it's been cleaned, they don't know all of these things.

4:22And we want it to be full transparent on one side on the cleaning process that we source. And on the other hand, we just want it to be like, okay, we can have full collection per year, exactly like a firsthand luxury or like, you know, luxury premium brand. The only difference is that instead of like producing, manufacturing this product, we're going to source them. So my co-founder is an amazing merchandiser. And once I make my mood boards and I make, you know, my collection theme, for example, this season is all about tartans, Prince of Wales, Hunstooth prints, like checks in everywhere. We actually call it, you know, let's get the check.

4:58And then once we have that direction and I sort of tell her, okay, this is the key silhouette and the key pieces we want to get, she's going to tell me exactly like a first hand closing brand. Okay, then we need to source this item, which is a mini skirt. This item, which is like, you know, an overcoat. This item, which is like a blazer, single breasted, double breasted, depends on the collection. And in the color scheme that I defined in the print, which we'll talk about like tartan and everything, she's going to tell me we need 33 extra small. we need 70 small, we need 120 medium, et cetera, et cetera.

5:30And the idea for that is to basically have a whole collection planning and a merchandising plan that will allow us to have multiple sizes of products that are very similar. I cannot say that they're the same because it's vintage, so we're only dealing with unique pieces. But the idea is pretty much to source pieces that are very identical, very similar, so that the key silhouette can be reproduced whether your size is really small, like very small, extra small, or size extra large, for example. Of course, as you go into the maturity of the collection, like the beginning and the end, those sources, you know, those stocks, they go awry, like, for example, all over medium are going to go, all over extra small are going to go.

6:08But the principle of Bay, which we created some of, was to offer direction and alternative in every size for products that are very consistent and similar. so you start basically from like you start the same as fashion brands um start a new you're not basically just sourcing what's out there you start from a creative direction from a team from a narrative from a store specific for for for the season and then you're just like then then you source to tell that story go ahead yeah and so the thing is that because i'm i'm you know also like a freelance stylist and fashion editor, I get the opportunity to go to Fashion Week.

6:47I'm very alert of what's going on out there, whether it's on the runway or like, you know, in a magazine that I still read a lot and like in the streets. And the idea is for my own imagination and the references that I can get exactly like, you know, a designer would do, I would just get these references, I could get them together and feel like, okay, we have seen a lot of that tartan, a lot of that square things everywhere. Let me market it. But the thing is that I can market it in three weeks because our time to market is also 21 days. So when Barbie came out, for example, the movie, we were thinking, oof, that's going to be a hit.

7:20Why don't we do a Barbie capsule collection? In two weeks, I had two racks of like metallic and, you know, that fuchsia, that like crazy pink energy and on and on. So that's really a flexibility that first-hand clothing don't have because not only they need to advance all that production time, and they also cannot afford a mistake. If my Barbie capsule collection of like 70 pieces is, you know, a failure, well I can always keep the pink put it somewhere else I can always keep the metallic and keep it for Christmas you know what I mean and it's stuck because it's already vintage it's that seasonal but it has still the same a better greater value I can always reuse it which is kind of wonderful and that you know fashion is sort of like cyclic as we know it so you know it's very different than let's say Saint Laurent look that you're going to see on the runway it's going to be talked about it's going to be everywhere in three years is it going to be still valuable I'm not sure where it has an Yves Saint Laurent jacket from the 80s right now is very valuable because it's, you know, a testimony of time at that time, that specific time that you don't find anymore.

8:21It is. And why do you think that more stylists, more brands don't do that? Like all brands have at least 20, 30, 40, 50, if not more years of heritage. They can easily have their collections. They own their own vintage. like Ralph Lauren is doing an amazing job I mean like I don't know 7 % of their revenue is they're buying they're like pricing it five times more than market value and they're making a killing on that Hermes on the other hand they're like it puts me in a bad mood when I see you yeah sorry the thing with Ralph Lauren is a good example because as you said it yourself in the past Ralph Lauren has based their whole brand culture and legitimacy on the heritage brand.

9:13It's not like a trend brand. They have their key items, they have their key silhouette, something they can really market and you can really identify. So in a way, if you tomorrow go on Vintage Star Collective and looking for something Ralph Lauren, whether it's from like 10 years ago, 30 years ago, it's the same design in a way, same, I don't know if it's the same quality, but it's the same spirit. And that's what people are going to invest. So Ralph Lauren was super smart in getting all their stock and like selling it because they were also fast enough to do that because they realized okay people are gonna sell our stock way cheaper than they should uh we need and also we're gonna lose a lot of revenue from that ralph did well but there's a lot of other fashion brands and i think which is like premium luxury or luxury even i'm always thinking about isabel maron i love the brand but i'm also thinking like these brands when they launched uh vintage their own secondhand platform i think it was like right after covid so like 2021 what they did basically was to get your clothes back in extent of a voucher and i know that jam western also does that to refurbish the shoes which in theory is a great i mean it's great that they're already thinking about it because not everybody does it but for me if i put myself in the shoes of a customer if i'm selling my isabel maran it's not necessarily to buy more isabel maran that's today super expensive like any other brand every market every is very expensive now.

10:31Maybe I want money. You know what I mean? I mean, if I put myself in my shoes, if tomorrow I want to, I'm selling that Bottega Veneta Crocodile shirt from Thomas Meyer, for example, maybe I want to buy a Dior vintage bag instead. You know what I mean? Because we have access to that now. Second hand is still in a price point that is kind of like weird because the market is completely exploded because they're very high, very low in the middle, which we arrive, you know, in essence. And you can have more opportunities. So when a brand establishes their secondhand business model on a voucher system, I don't buy it.

11:05Because for me, or I don't sell it actually. Because for me, it's like, you just incentive your customers to buy more and also like your one year to use that voucher. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe I don't crush on anything and maybe that's not the purpose of secondhand. Maybe, you know, and Rafflorine doesn't do that. I mean, I don't really remember how Rafflorine actually does it, but it probably gives you a little bit of money. And that alone, makes me even better in my relationship with the brand because I'm like, oh, that's cool. And I want to invest a little bit more on your second hand because I might have actually a better deal and it's authentified and blah, blah, blah.

11:41You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then where can people find you? Because you do sell in department stores and you do sell online. And the way you sell is you actually offer mood boards and you put the looks together because what I find is one, I don't want to say obstacles because that's not the right word, but people lack inspiration. When they buy vintage, they're looking for specific products. And those specific products, they're like, oh, I really want, I don't know, Chanel bag. They're like those best sellers. I think it's almost like an impediment for more people buying vintage because if you put like the entire outfit or the mood or the style together, more people will want to say, hey, I really want that look that I put on a runaway, but I can get it for less.

12:31Getting for less is not the only motivation. It can be one of the motivations. But as you said, there is quality is there. The great shapes are there. Silhouettes are there. But people don't necessarily know how to put the looks together or they're like inspiration. Yeah. So like nowadays, we have a very physical retail, philosophy because also one of the reasons we created the company was that, okay, after COVID and we had all this online shopping and secondhand, we're like, it's complicated to sort of reconnect with the sort of the sense of merchant and, you know, like the sense of commerce that we have lost a little bit.

13:07And we're like, we have this beautiful, at least in Paris, institution such as, you know, Beaumarchais Rive Gauche and Gare la Fête, where we have sold men's and women's. And so the idea is like, let's make a beautiful space where people can actually experience the portrayal of secondhand the way we do luxury and new and that's also completely new that's changing very fast in secondhand we're not the first but we are the first one to sort of like scale it up in a way that when you enter our store you are accompanied by a very good team of like stylists almost an expert because selling secondhand is not like selling clothes at Celine or like Sandra you sort of need to know shape you need to know how to associate something that's from like the 90s to the 2000s and again, it's unique pieces.

13:51So there's not a playbook. You need to be very alert and very, you need to have an eye, basically. You need to be a stylist. I'm a very good seller when I go to the shop because that's my job. My job is to dress models or like talent for cover for magazines, you know, from like a database that is huge, like, you know, like runway collections. So you pick pieces together and you make it. When you come to us, it's also the reason why we wanted to create a brand and not, you know, just do like a buy and resell platform, such as like Vistar Collective and Vinted, is because we wanted to give that creative direction and wanted people to be able to come and purchase a whole vestiaire.

14:29I call it vestiaire, like wardrobe, you know, vestiaire in French. So the idea is that you'll be able to come to us and dress for like noon or midnight. That could be the same look. But, you know, you can buy a blazer, you can buy pants, you can buy all the essentials of like the classic wardrobe. You can buy luxury, because sometimes it's included in your key silhouette, but our medium price range is like 90 euro, because the idea was also to be an efficient and stylish alternative to all the second-hand resellers, and also fast fashion, which is to this day our biggest enemy. it is and also the other thing that i want to go in because i've seen like a lot of ai uh it says that are saying like that are specifically going to second hand and they're saying hey like find me i don't know armani uh sued from the 80s or something like that and with more than anything else for me is like oh but i want a specific mood i want a specific kind of uh point of view i don't want to just armani suit from the 80s it has to be a summer suit and it has to be milan and it has to be like um how those people lived in the 80s the lunch they went to you have a specific image in your mind and you have that entire archetype that entire you dress for a mood And so how do you see your role?

15:54Because as you said, you're a stylist and those AI senses really want to kind of personalize that shopping. How do you see, like, I think there is a giant opportunity for you to combine that data crunching at scale with your sort of mood boards and really understanding. Because as you say, you have eye, you have knowledge. when you see a person, you know what they don't know yet that they're going to like in coming into that space. How is that space going to shape up then? Well, the interesting thing with this AI implementation for like resellers and like shoppers even is that when you try those websites, you know, and I've tried some of them to sort of see what's going on, you would indeed put like a request.

16:41Like for me, I try, for example, I want to wear flowers, but I want to grunge. some of them would just give you a compilation of like flower t-shirt and i'm like that doesn't really answer my question and also you show me a lot of t-shirts it doesn't solve the problem because you still need to source why do i do the rest why do i put this t-shirt with is it like a leather jacket a pants i'm lost i'm like you know and that's the same thing with drifting like you can buy a very nice piece but you don't have an expert and a sales associate behind you telling you okay this is gonna go well with this and you should pair it with this this is how this is the key business of like retail you know how to associate pieces together and like the ultimate goal is to sell an outfit you know if you can not just a jacket um so for us which is interesting we don't really sell online yet a lot we have for example i shoot campaigns and every time a campaign is out i'm going to put the looks or the pieces of the campaign online and we work for a shopifier so that takes a lot of time because you have to think that each piece is unique so once you did the product page and it's online, it takes a lot of time to have the photo and once it's sold, it's sold.

17:45So in terms of scalability, it takes a lot of human force load and time for just one product. And also that physical nest of the second hand where people still have like doubts about, you know, textures, smell, quality, all of this is key. So where I think AI is super interesting is when for example you know what you look for me i for example if i shop through vintage in europe i'm looking for example for like my latest quiz right now for my collection for for winter is a sort of like officer jacket you know like take it from like george abelie anderson i mean and your women you know even her last collection there was a lot of that and i'm like oh that's cool i've always loved it but then if i put officer jackets i'm gonna have like a lot lot of official jackets and you need to be more specific but after time and time vintage is gonna go my shopper algorithm and he's gonna understand that okay if i like that then maybe i'm gonna be sensitive to brands like agonist b or maybe i'm gonna love denim and supply as rufflorine not rufflorine but denim and supply was doing a lot of these jackets and no it's so which is very interesting it's like a sort of rabbit hole so for me as like a buyer when i sell my clothes sometimes on Vinted to resell them at my shops, it's very useful to get those series I was telling you about.

19:05Because we're working mostly with wholesalers of thrift shops where this guy had been like, you know, gathering close from like the dust in the street or like depot or whatever since the late 70s. It's crazy. And now they're making millions because, you know, the market is crazy. But then when you go there, it's already organized. When you do handpick, you're going to buy like Christmas sweaters, Angola sweaters, Norwegian sweater, We're going to get a lot of Norwegian sweater. You know, the thing with the little metallic hook that you put like this. I'm getting a lot of these. It's amazing. I mean, yeah, yeah.

19:37Can't wait. Where can I get them? Tell people where they can get that. Well, they can get that online pretty soon. But Gary Lafayette, men's and women in Paris. Are you sending that to department stores? Put in the message exactly where your website is and Instagram. I put it there. I don't know how to write a message on this, but I'll do it later. But yeah, so that's the thing. And that's how we create this series. And the thing is that when you go to a shop, it's not just going to be leather jacket on a rack and then wool coat on a rack. I am going to use my skills as like, you know, not only retailer, but also like personal shopper.

20:12And I'm going to incorporate this series with the appropriate trousers, with appropriate tops. It's a rule in visual merchandising that I've created and it's called SSE, which is Series Silhouette Color. And when you get onto the rack, you have that rule of SSC everywhere that's implemented. And so when you go to the rack, you're going to have three different, let's say, tartan blazer, three different sequin tops, and three different boyfriend jeans. And they are going to be color-coded. They're going to be different sizes. But the idea is that when you go there, you know the silhouette we want to sell, just like something new.

20:48That's really the same principle, but we have like a carbon print that's, you know, just car travel to get the clothes. Right. And then how do you sell that online versus in person? Because you don't have yet a store in Paris, so you do. We had a store that we used as a test last year, but we wanted to really nail that retail recipe at the department store because, you know, you have an amazing traffic, you can test competition, you can test the customer, which is like half local, half tourist. So it's very interesting to us to get all that database and all these people to learn how to open a store because opening a store is, you know, it's a risky business nowadays.

21:27You need to have the perfect street, the perfect corner street, the perfect this, the perfect that. So, you know, before we wanted that, and again, we're only like two years old, so we're not crazy old. We wanted to be sure that we can nail that retail recipe and everything. You have to share your Instagram per popular request. So before we let you go, because I know you have a board meeting soon, I'll let people ask any questions they may have. if you guys have any questions just ask here in the chat and I mean I have a few more because my question is do you work directly with brands and if not why not because I can see you sourcing like vintage look for brands in a sense that that can like what Ralph is doing for their own brand like as you said Isabel Maran so they occasionally have archive sale in their own separate website.

22:24I'm saying that it should be part of the overall collection. Vintage pieces need to be styled with current pieces because here there is a service called Thrilling that we use at Banana Republic at Esprit when we source because they clean, they source, they authenticate everything. They put it in your merchandising system. They assign queues and everything can be sold together with the new collection and i'm just surprised that more brands are not doing that have you had any conversations like that i mean for me it's more like we know that the level of like craftsmanship and like quality of producing manufacturing was much better before more more threads more the fabrics were better if it's also better made in better condition that's a different subject but we know that the value has not gone down except you have a hole but i can always be repaired you know what i mean i'm wearing my western loafers for my granddad that was 60 years old you just and you get to get them polished, change the sole, they're still a new, you know what I mean?

23:22So if they were incorporating in their website or even their shop and mixing their secondhand stock that has a little bit of a history with their new collection, not only you can, I mean, in terms of like storytelling, it's amazing because you can really show the legacy of these brands. But on the other hand, you might sell something new because it's matched with something vintage and get that look. And how you do circular fashion in the most interesting way because, you know, when you think about Ralph Lauren, who double RL, that label, that inspires them from the vintage thing, they could definitely not have double RL and just sell their vintage with the other one to the same channels.

23:59And I mean, I think, you know, they say that by 2029, the second-hand market is going to take over the first-hand closing. That might be true, but it's very interesting because we're going to come at a verge where like, well, everything that's old, It's going to come super new and super, I don't like to say old, everything that's vintage. Let's just say that. It's going to come new and it's going to have as much value. And you can already see with some luxury items, you know that some vintage Birkin bags are more valuable nowadays than a new one. And you can't even get that new one now anymore.

24:33So, you know. Right. For people, as you said, speed to market. Like if you see some trend like Titan, for example, it can be much faster because the brands that are figured that they didn't do their, like, I don't know, trend homework. They're like, oh, let's chase this. That's the whole thing with chase. And you pay an inordinate amount of money for air freight and so on to kind of quickly produce what you're missing in your merchandising selection. And you're going to spend a lot of money in R &D. And I'm thinking about, you know, Chanel, the last show, the conversation with Charvet, the shirt maker.

25:09We can easily in three weeks do a whole capsule collection of Charvet shirts. They're going to be completely dry, clean and pressed and, you know, cheaper than the new. But it still has the same value because this is amazing products. You know what I mean? It lasts for a long time. And again, the price of product online is 10 times cheaper than when you would find to their own brands. so they have to fight that competition which is I think insane nowadays it is and I do think that the market is going to self-correct itself unfortunately because then vintage is going to become more and more and more expensive as you say like I saw your Instagram post stories from Monday when you went outside of Paris in those sourcing facilities and you say they're making millions now because demand is just so high and they cannot Man, like really, really high prices because I know when I saw like those Banana and Esprit, like for example, leather jackets from the 80s, they're like Prada quality now.

26:13Yeah. We can look Prada quality now. When you touch that leather, that stuff can last for the next 50 years and beyond. Yeah. And be worn every day. So I just see that you have a fan in Mexico City just here. Nice. So thank you so much for joining. I mean, maybe you come to New York and make sure to put in, please, your website so people can find you. And I would love to see the Christmas collection, the holiday collection and the winter collection. And make sure to, you know, like fake fur or real fur that is not killing anyone. That is basically just whatever already exists, but it's recycled.

26:57because I almost think it's better to use already created real fur than to create more plastic in this world. Yeah, and you know that trying to recycle actual fur or fake fur, burn it and everything, is actually terrible for the environment. So you might as well just keep the old fur and just wear it until you... That's why I believe that because there is so much old fur that's just sitting around and that's not going to go anywhere. And that new fur, that's like polyester. and I mean that you know like I don't want to even think how much damage made to be created number one and how much damage is going to create to destroy the recycling so well this was wonderful anything else that you want to add and I mean I can't wait do a pop-up in New York I want to say I think you know savvy and every I love that you put in this is the best stylist guys I mean love with Gautier.

27:59I mean, he's not my dear friend yet, but I hope he becomes very, very soon. So far, I'm just an admirer from a distance. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you so much for having me. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye.

28:29Thank you.