Designs from the past star in a present-day, one-of-a-kind drop.
Arc’teryx plumbed the depths of its archives to source and spruce up 10 vintage jackets for an exclusive capsule on Grailed, the Goat-backed men’s wear community marketplace curating contemporary, streetwear and coveted designer brands. Through ReBird, its seven-month-old circular platform repairing and reselling items in need of a fix, the Canadian adventure-wear brand’s experts carefully “hand-restored” garments plucked from collections launched as much as two decades ago.
The partnership plays into the rising trend toward sustainable fashion, keying into the themes of conscious consumerism permeating the sector—especially among Gen Z’s eco-minded youth.
According to Grailed CEO Arun Gupta, secondhand shopping offers “one of the easiest ways to incorporate sustainability into your everyday life.” The Arc’teryx partnership, he added, “marks an exciting next step in amplifying the value of circularity within the fashion industry.”
Arc’teryx believes in the “power of circulation” and extending a garment’s useful life, Dominique Showers, vice president recommerce for the North Vancouver-based company, told Sourcing Journal. “This generation really gets it—they’re really the purveyors of all that.”
Consumers can preview the capsule on Wednesday at Arc’teryx’s new Soho store—the first featuring a ReBird Service Center—before the collection goes on sale Thursday. Each item is offered at its original retail price, the brand noted, with proceeds benefiting Climbers of Color, a Washington state nonprofit dedicated to bolstering mountaineering participation in BIPOC communities.
Brands across the spectrum are seeing damaged goods as a source of inspiration and innovation. Last month, The RealReal took a second stab at mending unsalable luxury fashion into newly imagined styles. ReCollection 2.0 incorporated input from the luxury resale platform’s 24 million members to come up “high demand” seasonal colors, silhouettes and styles, the company said. The result: 60-plus knitwear, outerwear and partywear items priced between $200 and $680, available at the Bay Area company’s New York City flagship store in Soho or on therealreal.com.
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In a statement, Samantha McCandless, senior vice president of merchandising for The RealReal, said ReCollection 2.0 celebrates the “return to having fun with fashion again by creating a collection that felt modern and optimistic.” The company’s experts creatively tied stained pants into a minidress and deconstructed long coats into skirts, cutting out well-worn fabric. Holey cardigans were reborn as blazer-and-bralette sets.
Conceiving and executing the capsule, McCandless added, “has given us new insight into the opportunities and challenges with scaling upcycling, all of which will inform our ongoing experimentation with the ReCollection program to increase its impact.”
Given the rapidly changing consumer zeitgeist, in the very near future “circular business models won’t be optional,” McKinsey stated earlier this month in its “Future of Fashion” report.
“What will really move the needle on circular business models is the circular consumer experience,” Karl-Hendrik Magnus, senior partner with the global consulting giant, wrote in the report. “As soon as some brands enable great ways of returning your garments into a circular cycle—not having to carry them back to the store but having them picked up, without any hassle, at your doorstep—and with a brand actually knowing what you have in your wardrobe, bidding for that, and sending you reminders of what would be great to bring back into the circularity cycle, then the experience will become so pleasant that mass participation of consumers will happen.”