On Wednesday, Madewell and luxury vintage e-tailer Reluxe Fashion introduced 550 pre-loved designer pieces on Madewell.com and via trunk shows at Madewell stores in New York City, Washington D.C., Austin and Los Angeles. It is the first drop in a series of three — the second will come in January, followed by a third in the spring.
The partnership speaks to several fashion trends, including brands aligning with sustainability-focused companies and causes, and retailers prioritizing in-store experiences.
Reluxe founder Clare Richardson will travel to the four trunk show locations to assist customers shopping the curations, which have been informed by the tastes of each city’s Madewell customer, Richardson said. Last week, top-spending shoppers in each of these cities received an email from which they could sign up for one of four local shopping appointments with Richardson.
The pieces were also chosen to work with and be styled with Madewell’s hero, its denim.
The campaign for the collaboration was shot by Richardson’s husband, fashion photographer Dan Martensen. It features models Paloma Elsesser, Dree Hemingway and Andreea Diaconu in looks combining Reluxe’s high-end pieces with Madewell’s classics. The online selection features products priced $75-$4,290, with 73% of items priced under $500. In stores, the price range is $60-$1,875, with 86% of items priced under $500. The Reluxe pieces being offered include Chloé high-rise jeans with plaits and a faux-fur black and white Saint Laurent jacket.
For Madewell, working with Richardson and Reluxe supports three core company focuses: sustainability, new customer acquisition and in-store retail experiences.
“We’ve been challenging ourselves to deepen our commitment to our sustainability goals, and what Clare is doing felt like a nice alignment,” said Anne Crisafulli, Madewell’s chief merchandising officer.
The Madewell shopper loves vintage, Crisafulli said. “When we ask our customers where she likes to shop and what she’s looking for, vintage comes up in the top three,” she said. Madewell has worked with pre-loved clothing before. In 2021, it partnered with ThredUp to host a pop-up of its own pre-loved items. It had a tailor on-site to mend and alter clothing and allowed customers to discard unwanted clothing responsibly.
“The biggest thing we see [with resale] is she wants the curation. She doesn’t want it to feel overwhelming. She wants it to feel like we’ve curated pieces that align well with our style and hopefully her style,” Crisafulli said. The same, Richardson said, was true of Reluxe’s very reason for being — it was about offering a site where you weren’t “fire-hosed with tones and tons of product, and didn’t have to spend five hours looking through 5,000 pairs of black trousers.”
Crisafulli said the hope is that the partnership draws in new Madewell customers. “We know [our target customer] shops this [mixed] way, and we also know they like certain brands — and maybe come want to come to us for a pair of Madewell jeans, but haven’t yet,” she said. Reluxe will promote the partnership on its Instagram, where it has 33,0000 followers. Richardson herself has over 48,000.
The collaboration also sets the stage for in-store activations, a current Madewell focus. For example, Crisafulli noted, “Our traveling denim atelier goes from store to store, and [we] do activations — whether that’s tailoring or styling events.” A few weeks ago, Madwell hosted a styling activation in NYC with Allison Bornstein, offering appointments that were snatched up in under 48 hours, according to the company.
