Over the past decade, countless startups have entered the rental and resale sector — many with circularity-themed names like Rotaro, By Rotation, Cercle or The Circle. More recently, the industry has been consolidating, hoping to bring various, otherwise fragmented, circular services under one roof and drive profitability, which has proven more elusive for rental than resale.
British company MyWardrobe HQ this week announced its third acquisition in as many years, snapping up luxury handbag rental platform Cocoon, which previously counted Kering among its minority stakeholders (the group divested Cocoon earlier this year, separate to the merger with MyWardrobe HQ). Together, the merged companies now represent 170,000 engaged users and over £10 million in managed inventory, they say, with partnerships spanning Harrods, Burberry, Giambattista Valli and Emilia Wickstead.
Ahead of their new chapter under the Cocoon moniker, Vogue Business sits down with MyWardrobe HQ CEO Coco Baraer Panazza and Cocoon founder Matt Heiman, the latter of whom will stay on as chair of the board.
Vogue: MyWardrobeHQ has been on something of an acquisition spree over the last few years. Can you walk me through the strategy and why you pursued each merger?
Coco: Our first acquisition in 2023 was Rotaro, a fashion rental platform that had a younger audience and a more curated, high contemporary inventory. Then, in 2024, we merged with Cercle, the company I founded, which was built on the promise of making circularity as exciting as buying new, and creating a luxury experience that could compete on curation and convenience. We thought Cocoon was extremely interesting as the leading player in luxury handbag rental. The team brings really deep luxury handbag and repair knowledge, as well as expertise in subscription models. Then, MyWardrobe HQ itself brings multi-category retail partnerships, logistics capabilities and a data-driven operation.
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Vogue: Why bring all of these platforms together?
Coco: These mergers really mark the shift from fragmented circular experiments to a unified infrastructure for luxury. By integrating subscription, rental, resale, sourcing and logistics, we’re creating a 360-degree circular ecosystem — the operating system that the sector has been missing. It’s about reducing operational duplication, creating a unified customer journey and making each item in our inventory work harder, so we can achieve the scale necessary to lead in the UK market.
Vogue: Matt, why did the merger appeal to Cocoon?
Matt: Cocoon is now in its sixth year of business, and we have built a really loyal customer base. Those customers are incredibly discerning and demanding, which gives you access to a lot of communication and information, but also places demands on the business that perhaps we didn’t expect. For example, resale wasn’t in our initial business plan, but we evolved in that direction due to customer demands. Now, we can lean on the leading platform in the UK and serve our customers better as a result.
Vogue: Coco, why did you decide to adopt the Cocoon name rather than MyWardrobe HQ?
Coco: It was a difficult decision because MyWardrobe HQ has quite a bit of brand equity in the space, but Cocoon is a very symbolic name. It symbolizes transformation, which is what we’re seeing in the industry as it shifts from experiments in circular fashion to infrastructure and integration.
Vogue: How is that transformation manifesting on the brand side?
Coco: MyWardrobe HQ is both a consumer proposition and a business-to-business solution. Very early on, we saw brands investing very little in a couple of key pilots, either rental or resale, and mostly on microsites rather than fully integrated with their e-commerce. We’re seeing that shift now. Brands are starting to realize that circular fashion is projected to be a $10 billion market by 2030.
Without mentioning names, the most recent white-label resale program we launched for a brand is fully integrated on their website and has generated 7,000 units in the first five months. We’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before. We onboarded 50 brands to our sample sale program between January and March this year. Brands are starting to see circularity as part of their retail ecosystems.
Vogue: What about consumer behavior?
Coco: Millennial customers were the early adopters of circular fashion, but now we’re seeing a big shift in engagement among older customers. We have a very engaged cohort of women in their 40s and 50s actively looking to buy into circular fashion, and, most importantly, wanting to shop smarter. We see wardrobes as a collection of cultural assets, and we want to help people invest in items that will gain value. Even the way we manage stock is closer to managing a library of cultural assets than a traditional product catalog.
Look at the Chloé Paddington bag; before it came back to the runway, it resold for around £200. After the Fall/Winter 2025 show, there was a 48% jump in demand week-on-week, and now resale prices average £750, sometimes reaching over £1,000. Customers are becoming savvy collectors who recognize how context and authorship shape value. When a designer moves house, the narrative and often the market shifts. We recently advised a wardrobe clear-out client not to sell her Dior Saddle bag just yet, because we think that will be one of the key styles increasing in value with Jonathan Anderson leading the comeback. WWe’re helping our customers see their wardrobes as an asset class.
Vogue: When circular fashion first entered the mainstream, it was positioned as a way to reduce the environmental impact of fashion, but that impact has been difficult to prove, as we reported on here and here. How do you navigate this?
Matt: For a handbag rental subscription, people are sharing an asset rather than having it as their own, so the utilization rate is exceptionally high compared to standard ownership — unless someone only owns one bag, we can’t compete with that. We do most of our repairs in-house, but frankly, we try to buy inventory that won’t depreciate because it won’t fall apart. I also believe strongly in wabi-sabi — the idea that something becomes more valuable and beautiful through use.
Coco: We’ve really been working to showcase the emotional equity of fashion pieces, which was the subject of our recent partnership with Bonhams [the fine art and collectibles auction house]. The other point is data. The more you scale, the more data points you can collect, and the better the feedback between circular infrastructure and production. That’s where you really close the loop.
Vogue: There has been a lot of chatter recently about the declining quality of luxury goods. Is that affecting your business at all?
Coco: Certain luxury houses have definitely been declining in quality. We have customers who have been loyal to specific brands for more than 20 years, and they’ve seen that firsthand. But we see it in our repairs department. If anything, it’s just driving demand from our community for circular products.
Matt: It’s interesting to get into the psyche of this. If you spend $7,000 on a bag, your expectation is that it will last, so a smart consumer is thinking about how much they can sell it for in one or three years’ time. Expectations of ready-to-wear are different.
Vogue: What will the new Cocoon ecosystem look like in practice?
Coco: We’re focusing on our strengths on both sides. The core will be a membership-fronted luxury resale and rental marketplace. There will be an emphasis on subscription, with tiers launching soon, and then we’ll double down on luxury resale and sample sales. We also soft-launched a luxury sourcing service a few months ago, which is proving really popular. The idea is to create a closed-loop membership world for insiders. Think of it as the Soho House of circular luxury.
We’re dramatically reducing our pay-as-you-go rental offering, where you can rent something for a few days. Our customers want to focus on a long-term view, instead. Rental was always a way for them to try before they buy, and that’s what the subscription will continue to offer for handbags, as well as a limited selection of eveningwear and skiwear. But it’s very hard to make the economics of this work for ready-to-wear.
Vogue: Is the rental vertical profitable right now?
Coco: We are a private company, so I can’t share too much, but we have different rates of profitability across different verticals. The sample sale business is fully profitable — we net between 10% to 12% per sale. The resale business is also very profitable, but rental has always been the weak link. Cocoon hasn’t been profitable yet, but that was part of the reason to merge. We strongly believe that consolidation enables you to streamline your business and grow different streams of revenue so you can reach profitability.
Vogue: Are you planning further acquisitions?
Coco: That’s definitely something we’re interested in. It’s the right thing to do, to drive scale. Circularity doesn’t work in a fragmented market.
