Alexander McQueen will resell its items on Vestiaire Collective

Alexander McQueen will be the first big luxury brand to partner with Vestiaire Collective's Brand Approved program. This program aims to give a new stimulus to the circular economy by the same fashion brands that, in this way, would have the opportunity to control their own pre-owned products by establishing digital boutiques. Alexander McQueen's selected customers will be contacted by a spokesperson for the brand who will ask them if they have any brand products they wish to sell, the items will be purchased by the brand itself and resold again in the Brand Approved section of Vestiaire Collective while the owners of the clothes will receive credit notes to use in the brand's boutiques. The brand's CEO, Emmanuel Gintzburger said: 

Alexander McQueen is committed to a move toward circular practice, both in the design studio and in the development of new business models. […] We are confident that our customers will be equally excited to take part in an initiative that challenges a linear economy and sets a new and more sustainable standard for the future. We hope many houses will follow because to have impact at scale, we need to act collectively. 

Thanks to this partnership, Alexander McQueen will be able to solve one of the main problems of the second-hand luxury market, that of authentication. If Vestiaire Collective has made authentication one of its strong points, earning the trust of customers, it's also true that numerous items sold in the world of reselling sometimes lack important elements such as composition labels, sometimes cut or missing, and the indication of belonging to lines or collections. Through Brand Approved, the world of reselling, therefore, gains a safer guarantee of authenticity – at the same time, however, the entry of the big brands into the world of reselling risks undermining the independence of a market that attracts as it provides an alternative to the very high principles of the first-hand luxury. The success or otherwise of the project, however, will be seen in practice: at the moment the Brand Approved section of Vestiaire Collective is in fact online and, judging by the variety and prices of the garments, the results seem very encouraging.