Luxury fashion is no longer the exclusive purview of size labels bearing single digits only.
11 Honoré, the two-year-old e-commerce startup innovating in plus-size luxury apparel, raised $10 million in new funding to amplify its mission of making the world of high fashion inclusive to well-heeled women wearing sizes 12-24.
The $10 million cash infusion will fuel the company’s real-world presence. The Los Angeles-based startup plans to leverage the new funding to get more of the nearly 90 designer brands it carries—like Ganni, Altuzarra and Reem Acra—into the hands of U.S. and international stockists, signaling the demand to serve new customer segments.
But 11 Honoré also sees an opportunity to ramp up its client services offering, a personal shopping feature that helps high-profile women, including C-suite executives, artists, doctors and VIPs and their stylists, access premium, hard-to-find garb.
Greycroft Partners led the funding round, which was joined by GC1 Ventures and Nordstrom, in addition to Forerunner Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Canvas Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.
Nordstrom is already taking an active role in the new partnership, planning to host 11 Honoré trunk shows in Chicago and Nashville this month before rolling out the show-and-tell to Atlanta, Detroit and other metropolitan centers in the prime holiday shopping period of December.
Premium and luxury brands have demonstrated a willingness to experiment with extended and inclusive sizing on the 11 Honoré platform, guided by the startup’s expertise in perfecting fit for plus-size figures. Diane von Furstenberg recently debuted a limited selection of signature wrap dresses on the site, and product sold briskly. The digital destination has proven to be a fertile testing ground for brands seeking to test the waters of sizes beyond a 10 without committing resources upfront to developing or adapting product.
“11 Honoré has changed the landscape of dressing for women offering inclusive sizes from high-end designers,” Greycroft’s founding partner Dana Settle said. “This round of investment propels 11 Honoré’s business forward by integrating a strategic commercial partner who has the ability and regional doors to adapt 11 Honorè’s excellent client services on the ground through a series of initiatives in the coming year.”
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Expansion into Latin America could be on the horizon, too. Grupo Coppel, the region’s largest department store company with some 1,400 stores across Mexico, is the primary asset held by investor GC1 Ventures.
Benjamin Coppel, Grupo Coppel’s director of investments, said the retailer is “passionate about the future and vision of the brand led by [CEO] Patrick Herning, the 11 Honoré team, and other investors around the table, where we find familiar faces that remind us of previous success.”
Like most digitally native brands, 11 Honoré has been thoughtful in building a true, end-to-end luxury experience. The company signed on with third-party logistics startup MasonHub earlier this year to gain greater visibility into the location status of any given garment, which could be in the warehouse, lent out for a photoshoot or on consignment, because as Herning said, “we’re the only ones who have this product.”