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By Jon Caramanica
In a loft across SoHo on a Friday night in January, Vincent Ferraro promoting luxury clothes. More or less.
On one side of the room, a tattoo artist covered the palm of a young woman with an illustration of a banknote. tattoos, he didn’t pay much attention to them. Instead, she showed snapshots of Patrón, posed for Instagram photos and disappeared with one of the many women who had come to fight to get her attention.
At men’s clothing resale site Grailed, M. Ferraro, who before the pandemic worked in nightlife, most recently as general manager and artistic director of the Rose Bar at Gramercy Park Hotel, sells under the name 4GSELLER, and for more than two years, has the benchmark for the rare Chrome Hearts, Louis Vuitton’s iconic pieces from last season and vintage backpack T-shirts, creating a company he says has seven-figure annual revenue.
“I took, like, a big page of what I’ve done in hospitality and incorporated it into what I do,” M said. Ferraro, 32, a few weeks before the party, relaxing in the showroom one afternoon. wearing a tight Yankees cap, a white T-shirt and Louis Vuitton ski pants. On the couch next to him, he had a small stack of new Chrome Hearts inventory, and one specific piece stood out: thick black leather pants with exaggerated wallets. and equipment designed to last.
The pants had a starting retail price, he said, of about $6,000 to $7,000, but he planned to sell them in the north for $20,000. “But other people don’t come here to wait a year. They’re dating them right now. So that comes at a price.
Still, $20,000 is some loan payments, a diamond necklace, a painting, a toy car. No surprise?
“I’ve already sold three,” he said, even blinking.
Welcome to the wild world of luxury resale for men, which has begun to explode in recent years, thanks in large part to the beginning of the young male visitor who has come of age in the era of limited edition shoes and Supreme pieces as asset classes. , and for whom hip-hop icons and sports superstars are also fashion heroes.
All those trends have started the bomb of the expanding men’s luxury goods resale market, an expansion captured through distributors like M. Ferraro; Justin Reed, whose Los Angeles showroom has been turned into a celebrity park; and Luke Fracher, a type of fashion garment, which recently opened Luke’s, the first buying and selling store in New York for this generation of luxury men’s fashion.
“We’re seeing high-end street fashion,” M. said. As part of a January dinner at Ludlow House in Manhattan, a few blocks from his narrow street store just north of Dimes Square. The men’s luxury category is not Loro Piana and Kiton, but Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga, Chrome Hearts and Rick Owens, rare Nike and Raf Simons archives.
This evolution has been taking hold for more than a decade. There’s a particular line between Riccardo Tisci’s revitalization of Givenchy in the early 2010s, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele’s psychedelic rebranding, Kim Jones’ Dior rationalization, and, of course, Virgil Abloh’s reconstruction. And by remaking Nike and Vuitton, Abloh implicitly connected his audiences, making it transparent that a luxury item is anything other people are willing to splurge on, regardless of the company that made it.
Fracher, 34, was one of the founders of the Round Two empire, which in the 2010s transformed the fashion T-shirt business into a multibillion-dollar business with nine locations in five cities. He left the circular for the moment last year and opened Luke’s in December, betting that part of the clientele that has been tanned in streetwear and footwear would be in a position to change to something more capricious.
He also highlighted how insatiable social media sources have created a persistent and renewable demand for luxury clothing. Clothing has become a language spoken all over the world. “And then there’s the desire to flex all the time and the desire to have new clothes all the time, so you can post compatibility photos and get the dopamine shot and lose some weight. of that. “
Because he buys his inventory and has little storage space, Mr. Fracher needs to move products quickly, which will likely leave him with slimper-squeezing margins than M. Ferraro or M. Reed, which function as showrooms with an online presence.
Mr. Reed’s space, in a warehouse in the downtown Los Angeles art district, is bucolic and relaxing, almost like a spa. In the middle of the main room is a four-section sofa across Sede Terrazza from the early 1970s, still in its original beige color. It’s been a staple of his Instagram in recent years, giving it an exclusive and complicated visual identity as his website, which he unveiled in 2017, went live.
Now, Mr. Reed, 35, is one of the most trusted names in men’s luxury resale. In his showroom, he decorated a stop in December with a Givenchy surfboard, a painting by Joyce Pensato and a bench from Louis Vuitton’s spring 2022 show. , receives prominent clients such as boxer Gervonta Davis, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs, veteran Luka Sabbat and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, point guard of the Oklahoma City Thunder, all commemorated on a Polaroids wall. (Reed said only about a quarter of his business came from celebrity customers. )
Reed, dressed in a hoodie from St. John’s, his alma mater, and Balenciaga Strike boots, described himself as “a self-taught street kid. “Born and raised in New York City, he sold photocopiers door-to-door before starting promoting shoes online in the mid-2010s. Once he started focusing on luxury pieces for men, he helped create the market through a stylish internet presence and a reputation for sourcing rare pieces. Last year, he sold one of the only known jackets from Pastelle, one of Kanye West’s first brands, to Kim Kardashian. Like Mr. Ferraro, he’s thriving on Chrome Hearts, especially rare pieces like a leather jumper cable case or weight bench.
Unlike Ferraro, it handles most of its business on consignment: Its profit in 2022 was about $8 million, he said, roughly doubling in one and both years since 2019. His average order on the online page is $1,300, he said, and about another 100,000 people stopped at his site for a month without ads at max.
Generally speaking, hip-hop should be thanked. Rappers began embracing luxury fashion in the 1990s and 2000s, just as the genre was making its way into the center of American pop music. In the 2000s, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams deepened the links between music and fashion, giving way to the ASAP Rocky and Tyler generation, the Creator, followed by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti. (This attitude has spread to professional sports, especially basketball and soccer, where players are now filmed and photographed in the outfits they wear. )take to the games. )
In a way, haute couture pieces have supplanted the chain of rappers as the de rigueur luxury purchase. the land and I’m going to make more money,'” Mr. Ferraro said.
By the mid-2010s, being a hip-hop fan meant almost implicitly fitting in with a taste aficionado and starting to be informed about how to dress. Around the same time, Grailed was introduced, formalizing a chaotic sales network that was more commonly positioned on online forums. and create a de facto transparent market position out of what had largely been hand-to-hand transactions. In addition, it was no longer mandatory for someone to speak in the express jargon of forum fans to gain access to a product.
Arun Gupta, co-founder and lead executive of Grailed, which it acquired last year through GOAT Group, which also owns sneaker store Flight Club, said sales of luxury clothing have increased year on year, thanks to increased visitor education.
“The point of wisdom has gone crazy,” Mr. Gupta said. “The number of fashion brands the average wearer knows is probably 10 times higher. Self-expression in the 90s is your CD collection, but in the 2020s it’s your wardrobe.
Before Grailed, to the extent that there was resale of luxury men’s clothing, this was limited to consignment stores, such as the one Ina Bernstein opened on Thompson Street in Manhattan in the early 1990s. Originally, it didn’t sell men’s clothing in its namesake store. store. Eventually, some arrived: fitted and tight, Armani and Calvin Klein, maybe a bit of Yohji. In the mid-1990s, he opened a small men’s shop on Mott Street. Customers were dedicated, but few in number. The men were not ready. “It was very strange for them to think about looking at someone else’s clothes,” he said in a phone interview last month.
But the social conventions of menswear were about to change. Soon, luxury homes were making more than men’s clothing, and more male consumers were interested in expensive clothing. As a result, Ms. Bernstein’s consumer base has expanded, he said, “It was dramatically replaced. Many men who do not paint in the fashion industry have never gone to art school. It’s just men walking down the street and everyone loves fashion.
Just a decade ago, the audience for some of the rarest men’s luxury pieces was almost comical. Alex Kasavin, before opening Idol in Brooklyn in 2014, resold high-end niche menswear, such as Carol Christian Poell and early Rick Owens, through a showroom called Gray. Market from 2012. ” There was a time with those brands, for those key parts, I knew almost every single owner,” M said. Kasavin. ” There hasn’t been a total generation that has grown up with that. Now there is , and this generation has the purchasing power.
You also have an idea of how clothing in this category maintains its value. “Now it’s like buying stocks,” Gupta said, adding that expensive purchases now pose fewer threats because of the stability of the resale market.
This developing market is also attracting the attention of luxury brands and retailers. Reed said he has been approached through major fashion players interested in forming a partnership with him: “I can be the Barneys of the aftermarket. “
Ferraro, for his part, would prefer to remain a niche. “I don’t pretend to be a $50 million company,” he said. “I try to remain original in the products. ” It sells across the spectrum of fashion luxury, adding Saint Laurent and Balmain “Decarnin-era only,” but Chrome Hearts is its bread and more and, in a way, its public persona. He’s a replacement for his clientele, which includes rappers like Lil Tecca, rockers like Travis Barker and athletes like Odell Beckham Jr. and Travis Kelce, who visited M. Ferraro’s showroom some time after his Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl last month.
“Tecca or Odell will come here, and we will leave later,” M said. Ferraro. ” And then we’re going to come back here, and they’re going to buy clothes. “Cardi B on Father’s Day to show Cardi some rare pieces of Chrome Hearts. He even sold old Chrome Hearts to Kristian Stark, a descendant of the brand’s family.
But it is not valuable, believing that even at those dangerous prices, those garments are made to be worn. The day before the interview, a maintenance staff in the showroom to get the job done. “We had TaskRabbit in Chrome!” Mr. Ferraro rejoiced.
Mr. Fracher said Mr. Ferraro’s quiet agitation was at the core of his vocation. “I met Vincent from Rose Bar”, Mr. Fracher. He used to prepare tables and bottles for us. Vinny is, like, almost like a designer of fashion spaces. It reminds me of Hedi or Demna, in the sense that he built a way of life and then portrayed it. (Nightlife is in Mr. Ferraro’s blood, one of his uncle is Ron Galella. )
Mr. Reed, on the other hand, is “like a jeweler,” Mr. Fracher said. Of the 3 sellers, Mr. Reed’s business is the maximum and his attention to the market is finely detailed. He has created a few micro-marketplaces in recent years, worrying early on about the resurgence of Chrome Hearts denim and promoting some of Prada’s only collaborations with Frank Ocean’s luxury logo, Homer, that hit the resale market.
The ceiling of this luxury resale market remains to be determined. The clothes are indifferent to the scene and the subculture, so there are many more proposals of taste that are requested at any given time. But only a limited number of products are manufactured from this point, and only a part of them are in flux at any given time.
“Athletes, artists: they hold, they don’t need to sell,” M. Reed. What I think they like is having a closet that looks like a store. “
Often, Mr. Reed and Mr. Fracher place themselves promoting to other distributors in other cities, or with other customers. “that”, M. Kasavin.
If Mr. Ferraro is a lifestyle ambassador and Mr. Reed is an asset manager, then Mr. Fracher is a yent. A carefree presence on TikTok and Instagram, combining their deep market wisdom with a sense of ironic exasperation, feels like you’re advertising garments indicating the absurdity that uncovers them. To sit with him during a few afternoons of haggling is to become a bit anti-romantic about the supposed exclusivity of luxury garments. Expensive items, some scarce, seemed to come out of nowhere. .
“Luke is the new Ina,” said M. Kasavin.
Mr. Fracher traded two small Rick Owens jackets for some Balenciaga pieces of a trendy dog dressed in one of Vetements’ first hoodies. A guy tried to sell him the Rich Depressed Children hoodie, but couldn’t agree on the price. Someone came to a blouse from the fifth season of Yeezy. “Nobody buys that,” Fracher shrugged.
Seeing those beloved pieces treated so casually threatened to undermine the concept of luxury itself. If everyone dresses up, does anyone really dress up? But he also noted the true circularity of the market, the magnitude of available supply, and the prospect of infinitely renewable demand, even in the face of an imaginable recession.
However, Fracher is not too involved with those philosophical concerns. “I think because the real hole in wealth helps keep growing, increasingly, in general, other people will need to dress like rich, and that’s the simplest way to do that. ” he said. ” I’ll be there for them. “
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