Dive Brief:
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Guess, Inc. on Friday announced that it will sell more than 150 authenticated vintage Guess items, through the Fred Segal store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. The #GUESSVintage assortment will be available there beginning Wednesday through April 29, according to a company press release.
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The vintage finds include jeans, denim and leather jackets, t-shirts and sweatshirts, "sourced from around the globe," and were curated by Guess Jeans USA chief Nicolai Marciano (son of co-founder Paul Marciano) and Sean Wotherspoon, founder of vintage chain Round Two Store.
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The brand joins several others in attempting to cash in on the popularity of vintage and second-hand clothes, accessories and footwear (especially sneakers). Resale has grown 21 times faster than the overall apparel market over the past three years, and could reach $51 billion by 2023, according to the latest report from online resale marketplace Thredup.
Dive Insight:
It's getting increasingly harder to discover vintage finds, as brands and retailers join online specialists in finding them for you. Guess joins H&M, Asos, Urban Outfitters and a host of players like Thredup, The RealReal and Tradesy in looking to the past for future growth.
"With the explosion of vintage culture over the past decade, Sean and I wanted to join our community in the celebration of GUESS archival pieces that have stood the test of time," Marciano said in a statement.
The #GUESSVintage effort and events are timed to celebrate Earth Day, and are part of the company's commitment to circular fashion, according to the release. "Extending the life of a garment by just nine months alone helps to reduce overall environmental impact by 20-30%," the company said. "The GUESS Vintage denim customer will help to save nearly 500 gallons of water — the amount of water used to make a pair of denim jeans. For context, this is equivalent to a day’s worth of drinking water for 1,000 people."
GUESS is also a signatory to the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment, a global industry effort organized by the Global Fashion Agenda, according to the release.
The collection to be sold at the Fred Segal store includes enough dead-stock t-shirt blanks from the '80s and '90s to allow customers to screen-print various archival graphics to create their own vintage designs, the company said. Those opportunities will be held April 10, 17 and 22, and represent a new beginning for Fred Segal, too.
The California retailer was recently acquired by Global Icons, which said it has plans for a revival that entails global expansion. The Los Angeles-based apparel retailer on Saturday opened a 4,000-square-foot location in Malibu, its third location in the area.
