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… three friends traveling to a faraway land stumbled upon a treasure trove, full of remarkable designer clothes, shoes and accessories. They had been left untouched and sitting there for years, waiting to be enjoyed and discovered again.
Could it be an inspiring new way to approach circular economy? Excited about their treasure, they went on a long and eventful journey to bring it back home, and decided one day to share it with the world.
Launched in 2021 by a fashion entrepreneur, a vintage connoisseur and a graphic designer, VINTAGE BY is an online platform offering a tightly edited selection of rare designer clothes and accessories, ranging from the late 1980s to the mid 2000s. Reconciling their love of fashion design with a sustainable mindset, VINTAGE BY aims to propose signature pieces whose high quality and strong identity have made their mark in fashion, transcending the reckless pace of the industry to achieve some kind of timelessness. The clothing and accessories offered on sale are therefore beyond fashion, celebrating the imagination and distinctive world of their designer.
The demand for high-end vintage clothing has increased significantly over the past 15 years, mainly because fashion has turned into a saturated market. The birth of the high street -and fast fashion in the 1990s- created thousands of proposals for consumers, but somehow disconnected them from the true value of clothes. The world is waking-up to the negatives effects of fast fashion. Buying clothes that cost less than food is not only obsolete, it also has irreversible consequences on our ecosystem.
Choosing vintage clothes is therefore a responsible and ethical way to enjoy designer fashion. Countless celebrities, such as Rihanna, Elle Fanning, Bella Hadid and Kim Kardashian, have worn vintage to stand out on the red carpet and their stylists increased the demand for rare and unique garments. While design houses keep plundering the past, and continue releasing “copy paste” collections, why not celebrate the beauty -and durability- of the original? It was during the 1970s that a new generation of designers revolutionized the landscape of Paris Fashion, the epicenter of creativity when it came to innovative clothes. Their names were Jean-Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Azzedine Alaïa, Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, English and Belgian brands would shake the fashion establishment to its core, with individuals such as John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, A.F. Vandevorst or Ann Demeulemeester rocking our boat and perceptions of what fashion should be. Towards the end of the 1990s, a new wave of strong designers changed our perception of beauty and contemporary style, namely Rick Owens, Raf Simons, Tom Ford, Olivier Theyskens and Nicolas Ghesquière.
VINTAGE BY understood that those were the golden years of fashion, gathering a diversity of voices and styles rarely seen during other decades. Our team has patiently sourced vintage items all around the world, most of them still bearing their original tags. In the jargon, they are called “dead stock”, but we think of them more as sleeping beauties. Here they are again, ready to live a brand new life and enhance yours as a result.