FASHION thrives on exclusivity, no less so on the Web. Insider cachet has long been the engine that drives members-only sites like Gilt Groupe and other purveyors of luxury fashion.
And it lies at the heart of Vaunte.com, a new by-invitation shopping site that will act as virtual host to a rarefied clique: editors, designers and well-born New Yorkers, who will flaunt and sell their plumage on this Web-based equivalent of a swap meet.
When Vaunte makes its debut Thursday, a small group of strenuously vetted visitors will have a chance to glimpse the homes, and well-furnished closets, of Manhattanites like Jennifer Creel, Veronica Beard and Iris Apfel, familiar fixtures on the society circuit, each modeling her own gently used castoffs and selling them, quite literally, off her back.
The site’s founders, Christian Leone and Leah Park, both Gilt Groupe veterans, aim to put a haute spin and a higher-than-usual price on their wares by applying to consignment shopping roughly the same precepts that govern the sale of art and antiques: in short, calling out an item’s provenance to close the deal.
“We want a very targeted fashion audience,” Mr. Leone said. To ensure that Vaunte maintains the requisite degree of snob appeal, members are permitted to bring on board no more than two close friends, each, presumably, with a similar claim to chic. As the blurb on Vaunte dictates, “You must have amazing style.”
The objective, Ms. Park added, is to “draw a community of fashionably like-minded peers.”
Member/sellers with a suitably lofty pedigree include Jill Kargman, daughter of the former Chanel chief executive Arie Kopelman and the author of “Momzillas,” a sendup of competitive Park Avenue moms. On the site, she swans in covetables like a cream-and-black jersey Chanel evening dress ($900), a Dennis Basso fur scarf ($250) and a high-neck purple Catherine Malandrino dress with a “Downton Abbey” air ($250).
Alexandra Lebenthal, a novelist and the chief executive of Alexander & James, a wealth management company, poses in front of a gilt mirror, Town & Country style, in a sequined Carolina Herrera strapless evening number ($600).
Selling secondhand clothes with a pedigree has until recently been largely the province of auction houses, where blue-chip names tend to fetch blue-chip prices. The sale of Daphne Guinness’s Alexander McQueen dresses at Christie’s in June brought in about $744,000.
FOR some, the appeal of such items lies in their edit. “An appreciation for the previous owner’s taste, especially if that owner is a public figure, can be an inducement to buy,” said Casey Monda, the director of vintage and couture accessories for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, a Chicago auction house that routinely sells clothing and trinkets of society figures. “There are people who place stock in that kind of reassurance.”
Being privy to an insider’s closet, said Tiffany Dubin, a private client liaison at Sotheby’s, “is like seeing how people live with their art,” a pastime bound to be appealing, she suggested, in a nation of secret voyeurs.
Mr. Leone and Ms. Park are banking on it, charging some 30 percent more for their clients’ discards than would a conventional consignment shop. Their own portion of the take is 20 percent for the women profiled, about half that of their brick-and-mortar competitors. That fee will double for the white-glove service, by which Vaunte has the merchandise shipped and photographed.
The founders make much of their “peer to peer” approach. But coveting your neighbor’s clothes is one thing, wearing them another. “I don’t know if there’s a huge cachet in wearing something that someone wore to the Met gala the year before,” said Cameron Silver, an owner of Decades, the upscale vintage boutique in Los Angeles. “With evening clothes, especially pieces that have been very photographed, I would be concerned.”
An advantage to a donor like Ms. Beard, a fledgling designer, may be the chance to promote her new label. For Ms. Kargman, though, there is no such edge. “Being photographed for the Web doesn’t sell books,” she said.
The payoff is more immediate. “The high percentage of cash for the seller,” she said, “minus having to lug the clothes to a shop myself, makes this a no-brainer to me.”
Web Site Offers Privilege of Paying More
This article
Web Site Offers Privilege of Paying More
can be opened in url
http://primenewster.blogspot.com/2012/11/web-site-offers-privilege-of-paying-more.html
Web Site Offers Privilege of Paying More
