The Best Places to Buy Vintage — and Resell Your Old Clothes

Nordstrom may be a first stop when you're shopping for something new, and now the retail giant is also getting in on the resale game with a recommerce experience called See You Tomorrow, curated by Nordstrom Vice President of Creative Projects Olivia Kim. Launching on Jan. 31, 2020, the resale concept store offers customers both an online and in-store shopping experience in the NYC Flagship store, featuring an authenticated assortment of preloved apparel and accessories from highly coveted brands like Ganni and Staud to Manolo Blahnik and Rosetta Getty (Ganni has even collaborated on quilts for the shop which are made up of deadstock and scrap fabric).

At launch, the shop will be stocked with merchandise sourced from the Nordstrom Quality Center, the facility that receives and processes returned and damaged merchandise from Nordstrom's full-price channels. All merchandise will be expertly cleaned, repaired and refurbished before it becomes available for sale.

As for selling your own items, Nordstrom is offering a customer intake program in the Nordstrom NYC Flagship store (no appointment required!) where customers can meet with a buyer and sell their items (each piece will undergo an authentication process and be priced by the buyer based on a tool which determines the best resale value) in exchange for Nordstrom gift cards that can be spent at Nordstrom, Nordstrom Rack, HauteLook, and Trunk Club. For items that don't meet brand, category, or condition guidelines, Nordstrom will donate items to the NYC non-profit Housing Works if a customer does not choose to their take items back.

Additionally, Nordstrom will also soon launch an online intake program where customers around the country will have the ability to mail in merchandise and also have the option to have items that are not bought by Nordstrom donated to Housing Works or returned back to them.

Fashionphile is a reseller of luxury bags, accessories, jewelry, and watches, and they have a selection that boasts some of the highest-end names in fashion. After submitting an item for sale, sellers can track each step in the process — from submission, to price quote, to listing, and beyond — so you're always on top of your item's status. Additionally, as a buyer, the unique aspect of Fashionphile is that they run what they call their BuyBack Program. If you've purchased an item on their website and want to trade it back within 180 days, the brand will offer you 70 percent of the price you originally paid.

Fashionphile has also partnered with Neiman Marcus where you can visit select participating locations to sell items at a Fashionphile Studio. Once items are authenticated, sellers will be issued payment via check, PayPal, direct deposit, or a Neiman Marcus gift card which includes a 10-percent bonus!

As of Winter 2019, Rebecca Taylor launched ReCollect, a program that allows customers to trade in gently worn pieces from past collections and get store credit or credit to use on the website to purchase something new. And it gets even better — half of ReCollect's proceeds will be donated to Cool Effect, a nonprofit focused on reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change. You can also purchase the vintage pieces Rebecca Taylor is styling after collection and posting on the site. It's about time brands start moving in this direction, especially with the new appeal of wearing vintage clothing! Learn if your Rebecca Taylor pieces are a fit, and get to shopping and recycling here.

Vestiaire Collective offers a wide selection of both vintage and current-market resale. The company is unique in that the seller is responsible for creating their own listing (and keeps their item until it's sold), but the item and pricing have to be accepted by Vestiaire before the listing goes live. Additionally, for buyers' peace of mind, sold items are first shipped to the company for authentication before they are passed along to the winning bidder.

Based in Paris, Re-SEE is heavily curated and presented in a more editorial way than many of their competitors. The company collects sellers' merchandise to authenticate, shoot on their own models, and clean if needed. As such, buyers have the opportunity to see each piece of clothing as it would fit. What's more, if the piece is from an actual runway collection, Re-SEE often includes an image of the originally styled look from the designer's show.

The RealReal is one of the most well-known and highly trafficked resale sites today — and for good reason. The items are priced to sell, and the company offers concierge services for sellers to make the process of closet clean-out as painless as possible. As a seller, you can submit individual items for review, or — if you're looking to rid yourself of a higher volume of pieces — have a stylist come to your home to help you sort through every inch of your closet. As for buyers, the company offers some of the most competitive prices for the largest design houses in the world.

Poshmark's business model is built on a marketplace structure, where the company itself never has its hands on any of the pieces that are bought or sold through their website. Much like eBay, the seller creates their own listing, price, and photographs, and works directly with the buyer when it is sold. The brand's point of difference, however, is that it's largely app-based. So, as a seller, your initial listing must be created on the app itself, not the website. While you can use the site to modify your closet and shop, Poshmark very clearly tries to drive all users to their mobile platform.

Tradesy has one of the easiest selling platforms available, walking you through all of the information you need to include in a no-brainer kind of way. Additionally, while you can choose what kind of packaging you wish to eventually ship your items with, Tradesy takes care of the packaging, immediately sending out a shipping kit to the seller upon sale.

While Buffalo Exchange does not have a shoppable website, they boast more than 50 locations across 19 states and counting. They accept sales during all of their open business hours, seven days a week, and will quote you prices on the spot. Additionally, unlike other retailers that sell on consignment, Buffalo Exchange will buy your items outright. After being quoted a retail price, sellers are offered either 30 percent in cash or 50 percent in store credit. It's a great option for sellers who are looking for fast cash instead of high price tags.

New to the scene, Thrilling uses its platform to support small businesses across the United States. So while you can't sell your own individual items through the retailer, they provide listings from some of the best vintage stores that you might not otherwise have access to, geographically speaking. And, for the stores themselves, it's a great way to promote their businesses in a more widespread way than they ever could before.