Vintage isn't fashion's past, it's fashion's future
Luxury is stagnating while resell is booming. Gill Linton of Byronesque tried to warn brands this would happen 15 years ago.
By Shonagh Marshall
According to a recent report, the global secondhand clothing market is growing twice as fast as the overall apparel market. By 2030, it’s projected to reach a value of $393 billion. So, when the purchase of new clothing is stagnating (and brands are hiring and firing creative directors at unprecedented speed in response) what does this all mean for the fashion industry at large?
Undoubtedly, a brand’s archive is becoming a more curious touchpoint. Take Demna’s Fall 2026 Gucci collection as an example. Much of the conversation following the show swirled around his rethinking of Gucci Tom Ford-era pieces. Would it make more sense for Gucci to start selling and controlling the archive, instead of imitating it? Sure, creative directors have often looked back to the house codes when designing, but as the purchase of secondhand or vintage clothing (there is a difference, after all) has become so lucrative and commonplace, an interesting friction emerges. Is secondhand the new market?
Gill Linton, brand strategist and founder of Byronesque, thinks so. She has been selling ‘contemporary’ vintage – focusing on post-punk design heroes such as Margiela, Westwood, McQueen, Comme, Raf and Yohji – since 2012. When she started out, she was laughed out of boardrooms – people saying the idea of selling old clothes as a luxury was ‘insane’. Fifteen years later, it has become a booming business, and she thinks that the major fashion conglomerates have been backing the wrong marketing horse when it comes to their archives.
You’ve said that the fashion industry ignoring vintage fashion is a bit like how the music industry overlooked streaming. Do you think fashion houses see vintage as a threat?
The big groups have been talking to vintage industry platforms for years, as a means of monitoring it – waiting to see where it goes before making any real commitment in favour of marketing that poses less risk. The easy favourite being, “sell your old X brand on this platform and you’ll get a voucher to buy something new to support our sustainability program.” In my opinion, and in many cases, brands have been betting on the wrong marketing horse. The vintage market is changing so much all the time and it’s now out of control. That’s the streaming comparison: Napster changed the way we listen to music, and the labels didn’t take it seriously enough. The same dynamic is unfolding between the secondary market and new season collections. I know they see it as a threat. It’s a human response to fear things we don’t understand.