Vintage Revolution: From Dusty Shops To The Glitter Of Instagram

The most glossy social network becomes a perfect showcase for garments that come, for the most part, from the last century. Let’s forget about small shops, almost filled to bursting and often smelly. The new frontier of vintage is on Instagram. The most glossy social network becomes a perfect showcase for garments that come, for the most part, from the last century. It might almost seem like a contradiction, yet the structure of the social platform, between stories, reels and carousels, offers the perfect stage for a sale based on emotions, uniqueness and timeliness. It is now an established truth that, to date, Instagram is the social visual par excellence: it is the most versatile and complete platform and, no less, the one with the best growth/monetization ratio.

You don’t necessarily have to put your face into it, you don’t need to create long and complex content (like on YouTube), and the first results, if you have set up an excellent personal branding strategy upstream, can arrive in much less time than you might think. But let’s take a small step back and understand how we got here. We don’t know if the founder’s initial idea focused on vintage, but history tells us that in a short time, Depop was populated by resellers specialized in this field. Finally, in a much more recent past, in 2013, a Spaniard, Augustin Gomez, had the idea of ​​​​reproducing the same business model of the online flea market. Thus Wallapop was born, which has the prerogative, compared to the two mentioned above, to connect sellers and buyers through geolocation. We have therefore seen that there are possibilities for selling online for all tastes, so why choose Instagram?

Indeed because it is the social network that, more than any other, continues to make an active contribution to the world of fashion and often also to dictate its codes given that in just a few years, within it, the profiles dedicated to the manner in all its many forms have multiplied wait. Precisely among them, many try to dismantle the idea consolidated by fast fashion that only the new is a trend: they are the “vintage & second-hand resellers”, standard bearers of slow fashion and a much more sustainable fashion idea. There are, of course, also profiles of retailers and physical stores that rely on Instagram to promote their e-commerce. Still, the most interesting are those of people who have created a real community with which they constantly interact, loyal thanks to the Reels with style advice on how to mix old and new, stories on where and how to buy vintage offline, carousels dedicated to the history of an iconic garment but above all, to get to the point, the “drop” or a small selection of garments and accessories, which is released weekly, chosen from flea markets and old stock suppliers, and, if necessary, refurbished.

The drop is a marketing strategy that leverages the “one chance to buy”: an exclusive product is offered because it is unique and unrepeatable (there is no possibility of selecting size or color). The buyer must be able to grab it before everyone else. Being Instagram a social media, as we have already said, extraordinarily visual and entertaining, fits perfectly with this sales strategy.

We are talking about all-around digital creators, with +30,000 followers each, who manage the supply chain at 360 degrees: they carry out continuous research and, once they have found the fitting garment, they take care of it (mend, cut, sew), selecting what they will wear every week for sale and later publishing posts with shots of the selected garments; they then make stories with the precise measurements of each garment to make it easier to purchase (the sizes and models have changed a lot over the years, a 46 from 1980 today would be a 42) but they also make sponsored content with carefully selected companies, always in line with their image.

Finally, they prepare the parcels, In short, there is a great deal of work behind every image. If they are so attractive, it is undoubtedly because they are credible: each of their posts, Stories or Reels never distances itself from the tone of voice and the image they want to portray. The selections are small and very neat (generally, each drop does not exceed fifteen items), and the styling is captivating because it is more contemporary than the age of the items on offer. These resellers/influencers have brought a breath of fresh air into what, for many, is still a world in which there is a lot of reluctance. Only some people are enthusiastic about wearing garments already worn by someone else. Still, today, even thanks to them, he has conquered a vast audience made up mainly of Millennials and Generation Z kids, more attentive to environmental issues than previous generations and more prone to experimentation rather than following the dictates of trivializing a fashion that is the same for everyone like fast style has accustomed us in recent years.

Having unique and non-replicable items is, in fact, one of the main factors that drive the purchase of vintage and second-hand items. The strength of Instagram, in this specific case, has been to take the strengths of every other platform, creating a perfect mix between images and content and today, more than ever, it represents an opportunity; every freelancer, consultant, shopkeeper, artist, entrepreneur or simple person with a passion can use it to create a successful online brand. Before thinking about starting a business on Instagram, however, there is a need for an upstream study, as previously mentioned: in fact, it is necessary to work on personal branding, indeed to have social media manager knowledge, to take care of all phases of the project, and finally, you need to create an efficient e-commerce or drop shipping service. Then follow certified dropshipping e-commerce courses that provide solid foundations from which to start, such as those proposed, for example, by Digital Coach, which are an excellent investment for the creation of a successful strategy with which to give new life to anything.