Vestiaire Collective bans the resale of fast fashion on its platform

Vestiaire Collective is to ban the resale of fast fashion on its global platform as part of its mission to "fight fashion waste".

It has timed the move to co-incide with the Black Friday bonanza sales period and it is part of its "Better Friday" movement. To promote the initiative it has adopted the hashtag #saynotofastfashion.

The French-based global business said it was inspired to make the move following a trip in October of this year to Kantamanto in Ghana where 15 million of items of unwanted fashion arrive every week. Much of it ends up in landfill causing environmental devastation.

Accompanying Vestiaire Collective on the trip was The Or Foundation, which is a US-based public charity and a registered charity in Ghana that has been operating in both countries since 2011.

Its mission is to "identify and manifest alternatives to the dominant model of fashion – alternatives that bring forth ecological prosperity, as opposed to destruction, and that inspire citizens to form a relationship with fashion that extends beyond their role as consumer."

Names on the list to be banned from the resale platform include: Asos, Atmosphere, Boohoo, Burton, Cider, Coast, Dorothy Perkins, Fashion Nova, Karen Millen, Miss Selfridge, Missguided, Na-kd, Nasty Gal, Oasis, Pretty Little Thing, Shein, Tezenis, Topman, Topshop (and collaborations) and Warehouse.

Vestiaire Collective is typically positioned at the premium-luxury end of the market and the move is expected to impact around 5% of its listings. To ensure that its ban on fast fashion doesn't lead to further waste the company is taking two further actions. The first is to lobby, with The Or, for legislation around Extended Producer Responsibility at governmental level. The second is to find practical solutions for the fast fashion items customers already own, including recycling, upcycling, and constructive donation strategies. The target is to be 100% free of fast fashion by "Better Friday" 2024

Dounia Wone, Vestiaire’s chief impact officer, commented: “We’ve taken this step because we don’t want to be complicit in this industry which has a tremendous environmental and social impact. The current system encourages overproduction and overconsumption of low quality items and generates huge amounts of fashion waste.”