On a rainy Sunday afternoon in July, 150-odd fashion enthusiasts formed a line around a block in Tribeca for the chance to shop the hand-me-downs of a group of former Vogue editors. The closet sale was curated by Liana Satenstein, the host of Neverworns: a series of blink-or-you’ll-miss-them closet sales featuring New York’s fashion set.
Once shoppers make it inside, racks of hundreds of pre-owned garments and accessories are at their disposal, curated by Satenstein herself. There, she works the crowd — hand-selling pieces, narrating where each garment came from and why it matters, and greeting customers by name when she can.
Satenstein gave an oral history of a T-shirt that reads “Apple World Trade Center” (Edward Barsamian’s tee, long-time editor and former assistant to Vogue’s Anna Wintour, although originally an Apple employee’s), and interpreted the rare liquid silver craft of a bracelet that belonged to her own mother. When she marvelled out loud about the beat-up Margiela Tabis and original Delta Airlines luggage tag still left on a 2010 Celine Phantom bag by its former owner, stylist Jorden Bickham, both sold within minutes. The Tabis sold for $125, and the Céline for $650.
Satenstein declined to share how much she makes from a closet sale. However, Bickham, who was selling a 17-piece collection of mainly Phoebe Philo-era Celine, says that she made $6,500 from the sale. All items sold except for a Miu Miu ready-to-wear dress ($495), and two Balenciaga ready-to-wear pieces ($325 and $350). Twenty-five per cent of her revenue went to Satenstein.
This was Satenstein’s eighth Neverworns live sale since 2019 (in addition to online-only drops). It was smaller than what Satenstein brought in at her “sale of the century”, which gathered thousands of customers. Though it was far more industrialised than the indie resale cottage industry with which she got her start; while still working as a senior fashion writer at Vogue, she would resell editors’ unwanted gifted items, organised a charity closet sale for her former boss, Sally Singer, and interviewed people about their closets on Instagram Live.
According to Emilia Petrarca, retail expert and fashion writer, “Liana was really the gas” fuelling NYC’s post-pandemic closet sale boom, which has included sales hosted by model Paloma Elsesser, stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, actor Jemima Kirke, comedian Chloe Fineman, and countless other influencers. Not in New York? Satenstein streams each sale on Whatnot, the live-selling app that’s bringing QVC-style selling to millennials and Gen Zs.
Neverworns turns the enviable personal style of fashion insiders into selling opportunities, something that has become competitive ground for resale, both newcomers and established platforms alike. What began as downtown, personality-led pop-ups is now reshaping how secondhand clothing gets marketed at scale: story first, transaction second. Vestiaire Collective, The RealReal, Ebay and newer, peer-to-peer rental startup Pickle have all hosted closet sales in order to elevate brand perception, build community and attract customers. Vestiaire evaluates their celebrity “tastemaker” edits on social engagement, traffic and sales (Paris Hilton’s Y2K closet sale generated nearly 10 billion press and social impressions), while Ebay cites cross-category spend among buyers who enter through fashion.
According to Allison Collins, co-founder of The Consumer Collective, consumers being drawn to pieces with more robust backstories is part of a larger trend in the global secondhand apparel market, which analysts estimate at roughly $205 billion (2024), on track for $367 billion by 2029. Luxury resale alone is worth $38 billion in 2025. The nostalgia element of “media heyday” (or the era before search optimisation and social media blew up digital publishing) is one example, but “that nostalgia shopping is found across the wider consumer spectrum, from wired headphones to capris”, according to Collins. “I think in the world of AI, TikTok and screen-oriented life, there’s a yearning for depth that draws people in.”
Collins adds that the average editor sale doesn’t grant much flexibility to price above market. These provenance premiums are rare outside of marquee auctions — “like the auction for the original Birkin bag, or some of Princess Diana’s pieces”. However, engagement premiums are real: a compelling story speeds sell-through, builds affinity and sign-ups, and surfaces inventory that might otherwise sit in private closets. For resale platforms looking to leverage narrative-driven shopping to connect with audiences, Collins advises finding fresh ways to tell a story around certain items and adding selective narrative depth.
“You don’t see real depth when you scroll The RealReal. It’s very transactional, even in most of the curation sections [such as ‘Vintage Collector’ or ‘Editor’s Picks’]. Even if the story is, ‘This came out of an Upper East Side former editor’s closet’ — that makes something a lot more interesting,” she adds.
After a successful ‘beat and raise’ quarter, The RealReal is on track for profitable growth. Major industry concerns like tariffs and AI could be a boon for luxury resale, CEO Rati Levesque says.
Contextualising resale
For Club Vintage founder Anna Z Gray, who launched a “department store of vintage sellers” that ran from 2021 to 2024, organising closet sales for other fashion figures like Leandra Medine and Petrarca was way for both parties to combine their audiences and introduce shoppers to her Gray’s marketplace of 170 vintage vendors. Most of the time, Gray didn’t take a cut of the closet sale’s revenue, and profited off the social currency of brand introduction. “It was a way for me to grow the community meaningfully by offering something that’s usually expensive in New York: in-person opportunities,” she explains. Gray closed Club Vintage in 2024, and now works for fashion tech startup Indyx.
Designer Lana Johnson, the founder of New York-based womenswear label Orseund Iris, organised a pop-up sale of her personal archive and her friends’ pieces as a spontaneous way to clear out her wardrobe and share her love of vintage. However, when customers asked to try on Orseund Iris pieces for fit, she inadvertently found it naturally drove customers to her own brand — she even ended up selling an Orseund Iris cardigan off her own back when a customer asked her about it.
While cool girls wrote the playbook for in-person closet sales, resale platforms have professionalised it online. This year, Vestiaire Collective has dropped curated sales featuring the wardrobes of Hilton, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and designers like Nili Lotan and Stephanie Gottlieb, among others, pairing each drop with interviews so “the stories can get really personal”, according to US CEO and CMO Samina Virk. The resale site looks to social engagement, traffic and sales to gauge their success — for example, Vestiaire launched the sale of Hilton’s closet at a time when Y2K style was trending on the platform and in the industry at large.
According to Ebay’s VP of global fashion Alexis Hoopes, the resale site’s ‘From the Collection’ series — which includes partnerships with Elton John, Margherita Missoni and Chappell Roan — is part of its strategy to elevate fashion brand lift (the measurable rise in consumer perception of a brand following a marketing move), combined with in-person events like the Vogue Vintage Market in NYC and Rocket Man Resale. Ebay’s brand lift studies show “a significant boost in agreement that Ebay is a better way to find and buy fashion goods compared to going to a fashion brand”. (Forty per cent of Ebay fashion is pre-loved.)
%2520(1).jpg)
Closet storytelling is baked into fashion tech startup Pickle, which grew to popularity after influencers from Audrey Trullinger to Madi Kahn Silpe began renting their clothes on the app, and when Pickle started organizing pop-up sales at their West Village store. Influencers infamously receive excess brand gifts, and won’t often wear an item more than once. The app facilitates renting these items to an already eager audience, says Pickle co-founder and COO Julia O’Mara. Closet sales at their bricks-and-mortar store and influencer rentals do not drive Pickle’s revenue, but they’re both ways to drive brand awareness: a Remi Bader closet sale drove a 1,780 per cent increase in referrals on the day of.
Most Pickle users are “regular girls”, says O’Mara, as one in four women in Manhattan allegedly have the Pickle App downloaded. However, social media creators have proven how rapidly story can move demand: a single Halley Kate listing for a Blondita skirt boosted views for Blondita by 454 per cent, and when influencer Brigette Pheloung (aka @Acquired.Style) posted an Instagram picture in one of her listings, a dress by emerging designer Ance Gria, the brand’s views increased by 3,364 per cent.
According to O’Mara, Pickle’s internal data shows that all user-generated listings perform far better on the app than stock images (yes, this includes regular girls, too). Her explanation is that user listings succeed in their storytelling: “You’re looking at how somebody actually wore an item, how they styled it for a wedding, or decided to pair it with certain shoes,” she says.
Petrarca has sold her items through both Gray and Satenstein. She says that it’s not a coincidence that these closet sales are happening as the prices of luxury goods are rising, and resale is growing in popularity. She also believes that traditional luxury has grown boring to some, due to the rise in popularity of the “quiet” aesthetic. “You can get a feeling of special-ness with a piece from a closet sale that has a good story behind it. And it also may very well be a luxury item that you’ve gotten for a major discount,” says Petrarca.
Ultimately, resale growth is capped by finite closets. Story-led edits — whether thoughtfully curated by Satenstein’s Neverworns, or by a creator with excess unworn gifted pieces — are proving to be the most efficient way to coax high-value pieces into circulation. And, while the commerce is measurable, the community aspect is what keeps people showing up — which is measured in Ebay’s brand lift and cross-category spending, as well as Pickle’s success with in-person closet sales. Gray describes her strategic closet sales as “low lift”, for this reason.
Petrarca and Satenstein both say there’s a valuable social element to in-person closet sales. Satenstein even likens online shopping to pornography (“easy gratification”, “a click away”), as opposed to in-person being like having sex (“thoughtful”, “you’re touching”, “it’s like courting”). According to Petrarca, people often go to the sales not just to buy something, “But rather, to chat with their favourite fashion writer, or make a new friend. They are social events as much as they are shopping events.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
Resale’s big moment is here. Is The RealReal ready?
