Paris Hilton’s Archive Sale and the Growing Number of Celebrities Selling Clothes Online
By Lauren Cochrane‘Walk, don’t run’ might have been the caption announcing Paris Hilton’s archive sale earlier this month. Set up to raise money for those effected by the fires in LA earlier this year, Hilton sold off 97 pieces. The sale was on Vestiaire Collective but, with items made of Y2K dreams, it would have been the envy of any Depop girlie. See complete Juicy couture tracksuits, a Takashi Murakami x Louis Vuitton handbag and pair of MCM shades to relive any A Simple Life fantasies. It’s no wonder that the items swiftly sold out.
If Hilton’s sale was bookmarked by those interested in acquiring a piece of recent fashion history, it fits into a wider trend of celebrities selling their clothes, and the rest of us rushing to buy them. Paul Mescal sold some pieces from his wardrobe on Vinted last year – including some of those trademark cardigans – to raise money for Pieta, a suicide prevention charity. As The Guardian wrote at the time, “It is unconfirmed whether the clothes have been washed since the actor last wore them.” Kim Gordon, the Sonic Youth front woman hosted one in LA in 2023 where fans queued up from 6am for the chance to buy her old cast-offs, possibly with added lore. “That has stains,” said her stylist Christina Turner, to the LA Times, about a hoodie. “It went through the grunge era.”
The most high profile sale recently was that of Chloe Sevigny, the actor who has managed to remain a style icon for 30 years. Organised by Liana Satenstein, who has made a business doing closet sales under the title of Neverworns, this 2023 event was titled ‘Sale of the Century’ and was treated as such by the general public, with queues snaking around the block in Manhattan. Satenstein described the queue as “a human centipede” to the New York Times.
It’s not just regular joes, either. Sophie Thatcher, the actor who stars in TV series Yellow Jackets, queued for Gordon’’s, buying a J Crew sweater and Bella Freud dress. Olivia Rodrigo shopped the Sevigny sale. She was later photographed in a checked Versace mini dress that she described as “my most prized possession”. The full circle moment? Fans buying Rodrigo’s own cast-offs, which she uploads semi-regularly on her Depop shop.
If we’re all buying more secondhand clothes – the market is forecast to reach $350 billion by 2028, according to Thredup – and scrolls on Vinted, eBay and Depop are increasingly part of our screen time every day, a celebrity archive sale is something different. This is a piece of history and an addition to your wardrobe – a combination that even other stars are not immune to.
As the internet allows more of us to become increasingly fashion-literate – and the likes of Zendaya, Kendall Jenner and Miley Cyrus wear rare deep cuts by designers like Thierry Mugler and Bob Mackie on the red carpet — it may be that queues begin to form for sales beyond the top line celebrities. Satenstein’s Neverworns has also organised closet sales for highly-rated fashion editors including Lynn Jaeger and Sally Singer from Vogue, writing on Instagram about their “decades of stuff”, ranging from eighties Claude Montana to brands shortened to their fashion nicknames (“Comme, Dries”). The comments are stuffed full of hearts-for-eyes emojis.
The irl nature of Satenstein’s sales are part of their success – they’re a hang out, and a place to be seen. And, in this era of fashion geekery, that’s a factor for archive sales even without the clothes having a connection to an auspicious previous owner. Dazed named Second Life, the archive market in Dalston, as the place where you’ll find London’s best street style recently, thanks to twentysomethings wrapped in beanies and brown to get their hands on pieces by labels like Miu Miu and Jil Sander at (somewhat) cheaper prices. Your bank balance might not thank you for attending but you’ll be in good company and – ultimately – much better dressed wearing other people’s clothes.
Lauren Cochrane is Senior Fashion Writer of The Guardian and contributes to publications including The Face, ELLE, Service95, Konfekt and Mr Porter. Based in London, she writes about everything from catwalk shows to footballers’ style and the linguistics of Love Island. She is author of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Classics. You can read all of Lauren’s writing on Something Curated here.
Header image courtesy of Vestiaire Collective.