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Last October, members of New York’s downtown fashion scene, including Paloma Elsesser, Dev Hynes and Coco Gordon Moore, posted mirror selfies that tagged an account called Sensoria. At the time, the account shared only a blurry campaign image stretched across six grid posts with a cursive ‘SE’ logo on top. The stunt generated interest and intrigue for Sensoria, a retail platform that’s offering a new spin on the sample sale, targeting a new generation of shoppers — and designers — as well as a solution for fashion’s waste problem.
Sensoria founders Emma Kate Sayer, Paulena Lynch and Shayna Arnold all spent time in fashion and saw the aftermath of inventory mismanagement and pile-up firsthand. Sayer worked full-time for Opening Ceremony and Maryam Nassir Zadeh, where she and Lynch met as buyers, then became brand director and retail director, respectively; Arnold worked as a knitwear designer and freelance stylist.
Sensoria works with designers to assess their unsold items, bringing new life to last season’s collections, one-of-a-kind samples and archive pieces through fresh photography, styling and storytelling. The garments are repackaged into a curated capsule collection called an “edit” — they currently take on between 150 to 500 units across 60 to 100 SKUs per designer, with plans to scale — that’s sold online for a limited time.
Its first sale or “market” hit the site in October 2023 and featured Priscavera, Diamond Dream—a family-owned retailer in New Jersey that sells Issey Miyake, Comme Des Garçons, Marni, and more—and local emerging knitwear label Salie66, which many Sensoria customers were excited to discover. Its second is ongoing.
While typical sample sales in New York are often exclusive to editors and those in the know, before opening up to the wider public with big discounts and even bigger lines, Sensoria is open to all online. “We learned so much from the first market,” Sayer says. Men in particular came to shop. They target a stylish audience, who might be more swayed to purchase a Judy Turner violet crochet maxi dress ($400) or a Sapir Bachar leather choker ($250) after seeing it styled with other items from the edit. The Sensoria customer often purchases “multiple items in one order”, Sayer says, sometimes returning for more. “We have a lot of repeat customers even within the same sale period,” Lynch adds.
Their latest edit launches today, 28 March, featuring A Company, Helena Manzano and Mara Hoffman.
“We wanted to have our own brand without actually having a brand,” says Sayer. “We wanted to create something, but not create additional product.”
Sensoria’s launch is timely: luxury fashion retailers like Farfetch and Matches have spun out, leaving designer brands with one less outlet to sell through, a backstock of inventory and, in some cases, unpaid invoices. It felt “logical” to build a brand around “solving a problem in an artful and creative way”, Lynch says, as well as fulfilling to continue to engage with brands and emerging designers that they love.
Thus far, Sensoria has relied on their connections to bring brands into the fold, though they’re looking to expand their business and plan to have two seasonal online “markets” each year. They haven’t raised any capital but would be open to investors. The first step is surveying the excess inventory a designer might have, and from there, Sensoria selects the edit. The items are photographed, listed on their site, sold at a discount of 60-70 per cent off retail — they take a commission of net sales, and prices are agreed upon with the brand — and shipped by the team. At the end of each market, Sensoria holds an in-person pop-up sale in New York featuring any leftover items (the last sold through at 65 per cent). The process, they say, is “very collaborative”, and the retail experience is meant to feel “elevated, elegant”.
Sensoria sees itself as a place to discover new designers from a trusted source — all three founders, as buyers and stylists, have “an eye” for what’s next. However, they’ve also been successful in taking a garment or collection a customer might’ve seen before and helping them to experience it in a new way. It’s an exercise in reinvention.
“We’re creating a new collection in our own way, using all of these past-season samples and then bringing it into our world with the shooting and styling,” Arnold says. For brands, they no longer have to worry about displaying sales on their own sites. “It’s creating assets for them that doesn’t dilute the brand, so that’s obviously an exciting and enticing thing for them to be a part of,” Sayer says.
Similarly, Sensoria relies on organic marketing through word of mouth, as well as social media, email marketing and substacks to get the word out about their brand. When the guerilla-style mirror selfies begin to pop up on Instagram stories, it’s likely that a new “edit” is about to drop. It’s the hope that their co-signs within the fashion community will spread the word, that the inspiring imagery will encourage shoppers to make a purchase and repeat customers will feel a part of something cool.
The brand aesthetic is inspired by a love of erotic thrillers like Body Double and Fatal Attraction, the 1970s/1980s industrial electronic pop music and old Hollywood glamour, and the Sensoria community are encouraged to take part in it through guest-curated playlists. Taking their name from the hypnotic Cabaret Voltaire song ‘Sensoria’, the playlists, videos, campaigns and even the online shopping experience are meant to engage the five senses. Just visit the Sensoria site if you’re not convinced. “We like to incorporate all the senses in the way we approach the brand,” Sayer says. “And the way the brand will expand as well,” Arnold hints.
In creating such a strong visual world rooted in artful, fuzzy imagery and the nonchalance of today’s downtown aesthetic, Sensoria is aiding in the brand-building of the designers themselves. It’s no wonder there’s interest. “Markdown culture has become so pervasive and really damaging to brands, especially small to medium-sized brands,” Lynch explains. “We’re not trying to contribute to that. We want the designers to be able to focus on their full-price selling, so the idea is to take that burden [of the sale] away from them.”
Sayer adds: “And also help shift that consumer mindset and that they’re just waiting for brands to mark down, so we can just be like, ‘If you want markdowns, come to Sensoria.’”
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