Ahead of the Black Friday sales, the French reseller site Vestiare Collective will ban fast fashion from their site. This comes as a move by the fashion reseller to position themselves as an eco-conscious player in the sustainability game in a move toward the "circular fashion economy".
As a platform that thinks in retail value and values resale prices, this ban is not surprising for Vestiare Collective. The site is positioned at the luxury end of the market, with only five per cent of listings falling into the fast fashion category over the last 12 months.
The ban will be effective immediately and will impact these fast fashion brands: Asos, Atmosphere, Boohoo, Burton, Cider, Coast, Dorothy Perkins, Fashion Nova, Karen Millen, Miss Selfridge, Missguided, Na-kd, Nasty Gal, Oasis, Pretty Little Thing, Shein, Tezenis, Topman, Topshop (and collaborations) and Warehouse.
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“We’ve taken this step because we don’t want to be complicit in this industry which has a tremendous environmental and social impact. The current system encourages overproduction and overconsumption of low-quality items and generates huge amounts of fashion waste,” explains Dounia Wone, Vestiaire Collective’s Chief Impact Officer, following the announcement.
A major motivator for the ban on fast fashion was a trip to Kantamanto in Ghana where 15 million unwanted fashion items arrive every week, severely impacting the climate. The Or Foundation (a US-based charity) was also in attendance on this trip and will be working with Vestiaire Collective on this initiative.
Last year the platform became the first second-hand fashion platform to become B Corp Certified, following wide-spread praise for its standards in "Workers" and "Governance" areas.
This is only the start for Vestiare Collective, the next three years will see them teaming up with a third-party agency to eradicate low product quality, poor working conditions and lower its overall carbon footprint. They aim to be completely rid of fast fashion by "Better Friday," 2024.
