Balenciaga Will Reward You For Selling Your Vintage Bags Back

This is not your average fashion resale experience.

As fashion and its consumers widely shift their focus toward becoming more environmentally conscious and concerned with sustainability, the demand for vintage and secondhand goods has grown exponentially.

Balenciaga, which already works to improve its environmental imprint in various ways, including using recycled materials and refraining from the use of fur or exotic leather, is taking another step toward a more circular system. The fashion house launched a resell program Monday in partnership with Reflaunt, a consignment platform that essentially works as a concierge service for the resale market.

Clients can drop off Balenciaga clothing or accessories at participating stores, or even schedule a pickup online. Reflaunt the handles the heavy lifting — documenting, authenticating, photographing and of course, handling the sale.

The program hopes to be as beneficial to sellers as it is to the environment. When an item sells, clients can choose to be compensated financially or with Balenciaga store credit of a higher value (though it’s unclear how much higher). That credit can be used in participating stores to buy new items.

The fashion house’s goal, it said in a statement, is part of its larger mission to become fully sustainable and “to encourage the practices of reducing, reusing, and recycling.”

The luxury brand, owned by Kering, is onto something. More people than ever are buying vintage, and, accoring to TheRealReal’s 2022 luxury fashion report, Balenciaga’s Le Cagole purse is its most waitlisted bag.

With this move, it joins a growing list of other companies making similar strides, including fellow Kering brands Gucci and Alexander McQueen. The latter teamed up with Vestiaire Collective in 2021, and also incentivizes selling items back for store credit. Brands like Levi’s, Patagonia, and Lululemon boast eco-friendly resale programs, as well.

It might be time for a fall closet clean out, eh?