Yahoo Lifestyle Cent Neuf’s Case for Building a Luxury Secondhand Brand
PARIS — Developing mood boards, colorways, key silhouettes and fabric swatches are part and parcel of any design team’s seasonal planning, but they usually don’t factor into selling pre-loved garments.
Enter Cent Neuf, a new Parisian label that releases six collections a year without producing anything new.
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The secondhand brand is the brainchild of three cofounders: Alexandre Iris, who is chief executive officer; Gaultier Desandre Navarre, creative and retail director; and Mathilde Carles, the collection director.
“We offer very modern collections. We don’t want to be retro. We don’t want to be vintage. We want to be a strong alternative to fast fashion or mass market,” Iris said.
“A ‘pre-value’ that we have over [vintage stores] is that we know what we’re looking for,” he said. “It’s beautiful pieces that have stood the test of time, and are still very current in terms of aesthetic.”
Navarre used to work at U.S. Vogue and now freelances for GQ and Vanity Fair, among others, while Iris previously worked at Ba&sh and Carles has years under her belt at Hermès.
Can you build a brand name on secondhand style? Investors seem to think so.
The trio just completed an angel round, which includes Pierre-Arnaud Grenade, the former Ba&sh chief executive officer who just stepped into the same role at APC. He’s also serving as an adviser.
The business model has potential, according to the team. Margins are “like 80 percent,” while turnover grew about 300 percent in 2024. Pieces are generally in the 60-to-80-euro price range, though a rare pristine premium-brand piece can go up to 400 euros.
The plugged-in trio takes inspiration from the trends bubbling up on Paris streets and fashion week before refining each collection, then sources from stocks of secondhand goods, some of which haven’t been opened in decades. “The time to market for us is very quick. We thrive in seeing the quality and [having] a good eye with what we can sell,” said Navarre.
For example, amid last year’s Barbie-mania, the team scouted, sourced and supplied their collection within two weeks. The condensed time allows for targeted offerings, instead of trying to develop hundreds of pieces months in advance.
He emphasized the brand is not about finding vintage pieces and then reselling them, but about creating a cohesive collection and look from the bottom up, then unearthing the right gems from secondhand warehouses across Europe to fill out their racks.
Those racks now include their own shops-in-shop at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann — one for women’s and one for men’s — as well as a smaller presence at Le Bon Marché.
The Galeries Lafayette space is “almost a little flagship,” Navarre said. They’re positioned near Ganni and other brands with sustainable messaging. “We’re able to really show what we can do in terms of visual merchandising and creative direction. And we are opened up to a whole different audience,” he said.
The space is dotted with its own branding and ad campaigns, which are shot every two months with an artist or muse to convey the mood of the moment.
Cent Neuf is a play on (French) words, meaning “fresh blood.” They want an upscale consumer to be introduced to the concept of secondhand while offering a luxury perspective and experience.
“Our customers are not really like the aficionados of vintage,” said Navarre, who noted that many remark on the quality and construction of older items relative to the price. “They want to give up Uniqlo or Sandro, but they are just not going to go to a thrift shop.”
Their demographic is moderately concerned by the environmental impacts of apparel industry production, but hold negative assumptions about secondhand. “We’re removing all of that, and we’re providing a service because there’s still obstacles to buying vintage. We understand [the assumptions] and we’re here to counter that by offering the best experience that we can,” he said.
During the fundraising process, potential investors inquired about future scarcity, but the team reassured that there is ample excess stock that is decades old and in near-pristine condition — and that’s just in the French warehouses.
Cent Neuf’s costs include the purchasing and cleaning, partnering with a medical-grade facility, and each item goes through two rounds of quality control before it hits the floor.
The sourcing process is rigorous to provide a size range, and stylists are on site to help clients put together looks and work out the variations in vintage sizing.
They note that the collection is not upcycled, but “timeless” pieces are restored or presented in their original stye. Any small flaws are repaired so as to be undetectable.
The idea for Cent Neuf came from the trio’s belief that the fashion system is broken. “We shouldn’t produce more. We should stop the machine, and we should do with what we already have,” said Navarre. Even ethical and sustainable brands make more goods on the path to growth, which just “dilutes the problem.”
The team plans to open a stand-alone store in Paris this summer full of upscale amenities and service, asking themselves “What would a luxury brand do?” each step along the way.
Cent Neuf wants to convey a “responsible yet very stylish way of consuming fashion,” said Navarre. “It’s very important for us to put the pleasure into the shopping experience and not the blame. We’re not a pessimistic or cynical brand, we’re an optimistic brand.”
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