S10 Ep19 WARDROBE AFFAIRE: Ivana Perbi founder of the world's first discovery platform for pre-loved fashion events - on pivoting from rental to resale, and building infrastructure for a global secondhand events industry.
Today we're chatting with Ivana Perbi, founder of Wardrobe Affaire, the world's first discovery platform dedicated to pre-loved fashion events, which is on a mission to help secondhand event organizers seamlessly host fashion experiences and help shoppers discover them – all over the world. Ivana grew up in southern Germany, where secondhand wasn't a trend but simply how her family shopped, and where weekends at the flea market where her mother sold clothes shaped her eye for style.
After a decade working inside luxury fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, a research trip back to her birthplace of Accra, Ghana — and a visit to the sprawling Kantamanto secondhand market — changed everything for her. Ivana left the corporate world, retrained as a UX designer, and launched a fashion rental platform in Berlin.
But after three years of testing, and some incredibly successful event pop-ups, she recognized a much bigger opportunity and pivoted Wardrobe Affaire into what it is today: a platform built to solve the real logistical headaches of hosting and discovering pre-loved fashion events.
We're getting into it all — the pivot from rental to events, and her favorite vintage finds, including the vintage Chanel she found for a steal at a Berlin flea market!
Let's dive right in!
DISCUSSED IN THE EPISODE:
[02:54] Ivana loved style and collecting fashion magazines growing up
[07:04] When sustainability in fashion started to connect with her personal values
[08:20] Learning about Ghana's Kantamanto Market and the scale of secondhand clothing waste
[11:07] Ways to keep clothing in circularity — repair, swapping, and rental
[13:29] What she learned about repair and craftsmanship working at Louis Vuitton and Chanel
[15:23] The origin story of her first fashion rental platform
[16:18] Convincing lenders, consumers, and investors to embrace rental in Germany
[18:08] What she learned about the "attitude-behavior gap" in sustainable fashion
[20:52] Deciding to pivot from rental into secondhand events
[23:42] The gaps she was trying to fill in the pre-loved events space, including event discovery
[27:47] What's keeping would-be shoppers on the sidelines from attending events
[31:27] Why curation of vendors is everything at a vintage shopping event
[36:03] What the pivot required of her personally as a founder
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