Dora Maar Is the New Consignment Site Selling Luxury Through Storytelling and Community
Dora #Dora
The global pandemic has had devastating effects on the fashion industry. Retailers like Jeffrey and Opening Ceremony have shuttered; department stores like Neiman Marcus have filed for bankruptcy; factories have closed their doors or pushed pause on production in places like Bangladesh, canceling billions of dollars worth of merchandise orders; and online sales dropped significantly in April and May. But one sector of the fashion economy has managed to stay afloat and even, in many cases, thrive.
According to ThredUp’s 2020 “Resale Report,” the overall retail sector is expected to decline by 28% this year, while consignment and secondhand is likely to grow by 27%. It is by all accounts a booming market, but as resale and consignment continue to gain customers, how will the various platforms differentiate themselves from one another? And furthermore, can these sites appeal to the growing number of shoppers who want to feel a real human connection to the items they’re buying and the sea of vintage products they’re searching through?
Lauren Wilson has been thinking about this for a very long time. After working on Moda Operandi’s business development and client experience team, she set out to create her own resale site because she felt there were too few consignment and vintage resources offering a thoughtful, well-curated collection of goods on an aesthetically pleasing platform. Wilson launched Dora Maar, named for the French Surrealist artist, last year, offering consignment for vintage and current brands like Chloé, Saint Laurent, Chanel, and many more. Wilson and her team offer prepaid shipping and the items are then photographed on models and Dora Maar “muses,” like model Sahirah Abdur and lawyer Natalie Steen.
Amid the global pandemic and social justice movement, Wilson has shifted her focus to community building and storytelling. She believes that “social luxury” is the new fashion frontier, meaning that consumers want to connect with the human story behind the clothes they’re buying, especially if those clothes are vintage and secondhand. On the website and through Dora Maar’s social media channels, visitors can learn more about the company’s “muses” as both sellers and women, which creates more in-depth and meaningful narratives around the items on the site.
Here, Wilson shares her theory behind this very personal resale model.
Tell me a bit about the journey from Moda Operandi to Dora Maar. Why did you feel that this type of resale platform was missing in the e-commerce space?
The reason that we are so drawn to fashion, particularly luxury fashion, is the breadth and depth of the stories behind the brands, designers, and creative teams who make up the industry, and by extension, the women who wear their pieces. Platforms like Moda Operandi have done a fantastic job at highlighting this—from allowing consumers to shop full collections right after they appear on the runway, to championing emerging designers.
I felt that pre-owned pieces actually held the richest story of them all, but I was not convinced that this story was being told to consumers on the existing platforms. I received a master’s in costume studies from NYU in 2016, where we analyzed and studied how the human experience has played out in the clothing we wear. With Dora Maar, I wanted to create a platform that celebrated the power of that story and the style of the women who owned these pieces.
The backbone of fashion is people, and for Dora Maar, they are our muses. I wanted to move away from the commodification of secondhand luxury on the resale market. The whole experience of shopping luxury consignment has been very transactional. Once an item hits the secondhand market, the firsthand experience disappears with it and I wanted to change that. When an item leaves the original retailer, that’s just where the story begins.
Explain the recent shift you’ve taken with the brand. Why did you want to focus on storytelling specifically, as opposed to a traditional luxury resale shopping model?
The fashion industry has been at a point of inflection for quite some time, but with COVID-19 and the most recent fight for racial equality, the changes that had already been brewing have spilled over. Actively encouraging consumers to share and participate with your brand has become crucial. For so long, the relationship between luxury brands and consumers has felt very one-sided and homogeneous. For Dora Maar, our platform’s mission has always rested firmly on our muses and their closets, and connecting them to our community, and us to theirs.
But while we are a luxury consignment platform, I view the clothing as a vehicle to tell the diverse set of experiences and stories that our muses, and our greater community, have to share: perpetuating that circular economy of fashion by celebrating the sustainability of style and story. The past six months has really proven this to me: that human connection, in whatever form possible, is essential. I created Dora Maar to be a personalized platform on every level, and that means people first. It is the women behind the clothes that hold the power of the story—and with stories comes conversation, change, and transformation. We are excited to continue to expand upon that.
Why is the resale model such a booming market at the moment? Do you think it will have lasting effects on the industry as a whole?
Absolutely. There has already been such a de-stigmatization around shopping secondhand, and I can see it growing even more in light of this year. For the past six months, we have learned to understand what is truly essential to us, especially when it comes to luxury. It is important to me that Dora Maar represents intentionality in shopping. Each and every piece on our site holds a life that was lived, and I think that the more consumers are educated on this, the more they will feel a personal connection to pre-owned pieces. The more personalized the experience is, the more second nature shopping consignment will feel, and thus so will shopping sustainably.
How do you think consumers are going to define luxury now and in the near future? Will shopping habits change and will people continue to gravitate toward more personal shopping experiences?
Luxury is going through a reckoning. Fashion has been dominated by key players for so long—everything from trends to ways of working has been filtered through a trickle-down effect. However, over the last six months, the playing field has really been leveled in a way that we have never seen before. We can all only communicate, connect, and work in one way: virtually. So it will be interesting to see how it plays out, because we are still in the midst of a pandemic.
You will always have these heritage brands whose name and history are so powerful, and they will continue to be influential. However, I do think that new players and new retail models, like resale and rental, have the true power to shape the next generation. Two things stick out to me in this new wave of luxury, and they are the embrace of community and the sharing economy. I’ve started calling it “social luxury.” In promoting one another, we are also promoting a more conscious, intentional, and sustainable future. It all comes down to human connection, in whatever form possible. This is why we started Dora Maar, to lean into the humanization of shopping luxury.
As a biracial woman, what were some of the challenges you faced in your career trajectory within the fashion industry? What did these challenges teach you in terms of starting your own luxury fashion business?
In being a biracial Black woman, I have come to realize that my experience and my story can incite conversation, understanding, and change. I am not sure I realized that growing up. My father is Black, my mother is Puerto Rican and white, and being raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, and then working in luxury fashion, there were so few examples of women like me, or people like me—both in the pages of fashion magazines and within the teams I worked in.
I was raised in a household that taught me to have thick skin, hold your head up, and put one foot in front of the other. So voicing my experience as a biracial Black woman was not something that I talked about. There have been times throughout my career in luxury fashion that I was told things like, “I am not sure if I see you working here,” or “The girls that work here just come from a certain background.” In those moments, I did not want to believe that such discrimination could exist in the 21st century. So instead of speaking up, I worked tirelessly to fit a mold that I was told worked in the industry, but it did not work for me personally. Even when launching Dora Maar, there were those who told me to focus on only using white models because my audience does not want to see anything different.
For too long I was conditioned to believe that being Black in fashion was not what the consumer wanted to see. The current Black Lives Matter movement, and the conversations and leaders emerging from it, have reminded me of the role I play, and how I can embody the change. It has given me the power to use my voice in its entirety, and by proxy, the women and the community that surround Dora Maar. There is so much work to be done in the industry, but it is critical to myself and to my team that Dora Maar plays a part in facilitating and enacting change for Black people in fashion.
One thing that we are really excited about is our new Instagram Story series “Our Muses, Our Voices.” This has been a real passion project for me. We are bringing tough conversations in fashion to the forefront of our brand. It is so important that the women of Dora Maar are seen and heard, including myself. Right now we are focusing on Black women in the fashion and beauty industry—most recently we spoke with Zakiya Tomlinson, a luxury industry vet (and a former colleague of mine from Gucci). Next week, we are excited to speak with Delanique Millwood, founder and CEO of the skin-care destination Skintellect.
What lessons have you learned during the pandemic in terms of being a start-up e-commerce business? What are you excited about for the future of your platform and the future of the industry as a whole?
I could probably write a book on the lessons that I’ve learned during these past few months—we all probably could! But for me, what sticks out is how crucial and integral community is to Dora Maar. This means our muses, but it also means those who interact with our brand every day. When COVID-19 first hit New York in March, our team panicked. We thought about how to talk about luxury at a time like this. I had a client purchase an item from us (a very chic Helmut Lang midi-dress) in support of Citymeals on Wheels. She ended up posting her purchase on her Instagram with the caption “What I will be wearing when I am out of sweatpants.” We ended up doing a six-week video series around this premise. Our muses, clients, and other tastemakers in our network each spoke about how they are staying sane in quarantine and what they plan to wear after quarantine, while also highlighting other small businesses they are supporting. It created this community of small businesses propping up other small businesses during a tough time.
I am also really hopeful for the fashion industry on a macro level. You have incredible people stepping up and speaking out on how to make the industry more inclusive and sustainable, on all levels. People like Teen Vogue’s editor in chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner and PR entrepreneur Sandrine Charles, who started the Black in Fashion Council, are so inspiring for me, and for so many women of color in the industry. To see that diversity starting to seep into every aspect of fashion, instead of just a homogenous way of doing things, is something that should be celebrated.
For Dora Maar, we are looking to be pioneers in the industry’s understanding of luxury fashion and recommerce. Right now, we are focused on building a network of diverse women who not only love fashion, but want to share their experiences with it, and hopefully educate consumers that shopping pre-owned contributes not just to their closets, but to a greater story.