Culture & Style
This revolutionary shopping platform needs to be on your radar
The Resolution Store gives you access to the wardrobes of your favourite Instagrammers. Second-hand clothing never looked so chic, says Olivia Lidbury
It’s no secret that making it as a fashion influencer means a never-ending carousel of gifts from brands keen to cash in on their multi-thousand followings. But have you ever stopped scrolling to ask, how do they make space for all these clothes in their wardrobes and do they actually wear them ever again?
It was these questions that prompted the idea for The Resolution Store, a new digital shopping platform that sells pre-loved clothes from the wardrobes of London's most stylish fashion influencers and bloggers.
Hatched at Soho House by members and friends, Anna Sutton – who is also behind luxury sleepwear label Yolke – and creative consultant Alicia Waite, the site launches on September 21 with a handpicked edit of 1,000 pieces belonging to industry insiders, editors and stylists who between them have a combined following of 1.5 million on Instagram. The sale will go live for a few weeks, after which it will ‘pop down’ and any unsold pieces will be re-circulated via different channels.
“An influencer's job involves having so many clothes and it's so cyclical," says Waite, who has worked on gifting bloggers and managing sponsored content through previous projects with several brands. "It's essentially their economy. Anna was interested in what they did with the clothes that were left over.”
It sounds so obvious – surely such a concept exists already? Not exactly. While resale sites, ranging from the carboot-centric to those specialising in high-end fashion are in abundance, none of them are executed in quite the same way as The Resolution Store. Visit a luxury resale site and you're swamped with thousands of items, many of which might have been listed months ago. While sellers wait for their items to shift, the clothes are left unworn. The Resolution Store has made giving surplus clothes a new lease of life its modus operandi, hence the time limit on its sales to create a buzz and act as a deadline, and the founders' dedication to finding new homes for anything that's unsold.
It was these questions that prompted the idea for The Resolution Store, a new digital shopping platform that sells pre-loved clothes from the wardrobes of London's most stylish fashion influencers and bloggers.
Hatched at Soho House by members and friends, Anna Sutton – who is also behind luxury sleepwear label Yolke – and creative consultant Alicia Waite, the site launches on September 21 with a handpicked edit of 1,000 pieces belonging to industry insiders, editors and stylists who between them have a combined following of 1.5 million on Instagram. The sale will go live for a few weeks, after which it will ‘pop down’ and any unsold pieces will be re-circulated via different channels.
“An influencer's job involves having so many clothes and it's so cyclical," says Waite, who has worked on gifting bloggers and managing sponsored content through previous projects with several brands. "It's essentially their economy. Anna was interested in what they did with the clothes that were left over.”
It sounds so obvious – surely such a concept exists already? Not exactly. While resale sites, ranging from the carboot-centric to those specialising in high-end fashion are in abundance, none of them are executed in quite the same way as The Resolution Store. Visit a luxury resale site and you're swamped with thousands of items, many of which might have been listed months ago. While sellers wait for their items to shift, the clothes are left unworn. The Resolution Store has made giving surplus clothes a new lease of life its modus operandi, hence the time limit on its sales to create a buzz and act as a deadline, and the founders' dedication to finding new homes for anything that's unsold.
As garment manufacturing has been called out as one of the most resource-intensive industries in the world, fast fashion has become a dirty word. “We’re both really conscious and passionate about sustainability so it’s a great vessel to promote that message using the voices of these influencers with massive followings,” explains Waite. Every woman they approached signed up, eager to slim down their constantly expanding wardrobes. Many items are box-fresh while others are one-of-a-kind or vintage finds. Anything damaged but repairable has been brought back to life with the help of a garment specialist. The brands range from the cool girl’s favourite Ganni, to luxury heavyweights Prada and Gucci, with a few sell-out high street hits peppered in. Orders are wrapped in recyclable tissue paper and dispatched in re-useable bags that should be posted back to the maker with a pre-printed postage label in order to be used once more.
The idea of selling on the platform instantly appealed to blogger Camille Charriere, who has 680,000 followers and is the first to admit that she ends up with a lot of clothing that she wouldn’t necessarily have bought herself. “I’m very mindful of the notion of landfill and this idea of throwing things away,” she says. “But there is no such thing as away – ‘away’ is not a place, it’s an ocean not very far from here and it’s very important to remind myself of that. I don’t want to have a super-extensive closet.”
The idea of selling on the platform instantly appealed to blogger Camille Charriere, who has 680,000 followers and is the first to admit that she ends up with a lot of clothing that she wouldn’t necessarily have bought herself. “I’m very mindful of the notion of landfill and this idea of throwing things away,” she says. “But there is no such thing as away – ‘away’ is not a place, it’s an ocean not very far from here and it’s very important to remind myself of that. I don’t want to have a super-extensive closet.”
“The perception is that it’s our job to incentivise people to shop the whole time but that’s not the case,” says Charriere. “Obviously I have a role as a sort of curator to filter down what I think is cool, but that doesn’t mean constantly showing you things and I’m quite careful not to do that. The less you have the better you dress - clothes look better when they’ve been lived-in”.
Charriere’s view is echoed by fellow blogger Lindsey Holland. “Day to day I wear the same thing – I live in vintage Levi’s, but for Instagram I might have to change into something different.” But she's conscious of fuelling a fast fashion culture; in a recent Instagram story sharing her new season looks, she urged followers to look in their wardrobes first to see if they already owned something similar - rather than rushing out to buy something new. The response surprised her: “Lots of people messaged me to thank me for saying that. Some even admitted that they were ready to buy what I'd posted, but realised they had something similar and could find a new way to style it."
Waite and Sutton share this aim for the Resolution Store, to put less of a premium on newness and more on individuality and styling - and their beautifully-designed e-shop certainly puts the thrill back into buying second-hand. Plans are already underway for another sale later in the season and the duo are exploring the possibility of a Scandinavian or Los Angeles-centric pop-up. Watch this space.
The Resolution Store launches on September 21. theresolutionstore.com.
Charriere’s view is echoed by fellow blogger Lindsey Holland. “Day to day I wear the same thing – I live in vintage Levi’s, but for Instagram I might have to change into something different.” But she's conscious of fuelling a fast fashion culture; in a recent Instagram story sharing her new season looks, she urged followers to look in their wardrobes first to see if they already owned something similar - rather than rushing out to buy something new. The response surprised her: “Lots of people messaged me to thank me for saying that. Some even admitted that they were ready to buy what I'd posted, but realised they had something similar and could find a new way to style it."
Waite and Sutton share this aim for the Resolution Store, to put less of a premium on newness and more on individuality and styling - and their beautifully-designed e-shop certainly puts the thrill back into buying second-hand. Plans are already underway for another sale later in the season and the duo are exploring the possibility of a Scandinavian or Los Angeles-centric pop-up. Watch this space.
The Resolution Store launches on September 21. theresolutionstore.com.