By Daniela Culinovic

The fashion industry has been tested in the last couple of years, not to mention, the last year. Apart from navigating retail through the pandemic, in many ways, our present is the time of experimentation, responding to changes in the way shoppers relate to fashion. 

Although dominated by the “less is more”, “no waste” and other minimalist phraseology, the behavior of shoppers goes in the opposite direction. Customers demand more.

They want to be heard, validated, and inspired by a brand, and brands are looking for ways to connect with the customers on a more intimate level. For instance, luxury Maisons with long traditions, such as Balenciaga, Gucci, and Loewe have used iconic cartoon characters on their products to emotionally relate to Asian customers. 

It may sound, perhaps, as a greedy capitalist move, but, from a sustainability point of view, enabling the emotionally bonding experience between the owner and the fashion object logically leads to longer product retention, and, consequently, less waste.

Why did the need for elevating fashion products from mere objects to tokens of personal experience become so obvious now? Is it due to the pandemic, where our physical and emotional spaces became so confined that we are looking for ways to compensate for the experiences we cannot physically have? Or is it just that the pandemic helped us delve into that part of our human DNA that needs stories as a part of life enrichment (out of which we created literature, theater, philosophy), and, perhaps, our survival as social beings? 

As a child, I grew up around the idea that a fashion piece necessarily tells a personal story. I remember browsing through my Italian-Croatian aunt Veronique’s wardrobe full of well-maintained sweaters, dresses, and coats. I remember being drawn, by the fresh smell of the neatly sorted clothes, and the vibrancy of patterns and colors that struck you upon opening the wardrobe. This world of elegance and materials diverse in their composition often stood in a contrast with the reality of everyday life. Then, I’d select a piece, and she’d take it out and tell a story about it: where she wore it, where she bought it, what was she doing while wearing it. Every piece in her wardrobe had a personal story attached to it, and the way she related to the pieces in her wardrobe seemed, in the mind of a little girl, somewhat magical. This is what fashion means to my aunt: longevity, cherished memory, a piece of art, and trendless beauty. I inherited these values from her, thanks to her storytelling.

My memory shows that the concept of allowing your closet to be intimately related to one’s lifestyle is not new. It has been nurtured through generations in the regions of the world where fashion, quality, and longevity, more traditionally go hand in hand.

If sustainability is about bringing back the value to fashion and fashion purchase, which has been degraded through fast-fashion mentality, then it is unsurprising that storytelling comes back in vogue. But not everything goes. Brands need to be able to create authentic and relatable experiences with the owner-to-be, and the best example, again, and unsurprisingly so, has been luxury fashion.

“Luxury is very human to me. It is an emotion. It tells a story”, says Lauren Wilson, a founder of an online luxury consignment platform, Dora Maar, and continues, “You don’t just buy a luxury item and flip it aside. It is an intentional, beautiful quality, that you shop consciously for; either to celebrate a special event, to commemorate something personal. People save for a lifetime to be able to afford it.” 

If luxury tells a story due to the artistry that goes into its creation, imagine the storytelling potential behind pre-loved luxury items. In addition to artistry, in pre-loved luxury, there is a component of a personality: someone who wore the piece in a particular manner, and, in Lauren’s words, with a particular intention. This emotional and personal value behind a pre-loved luxury is exactly what Dora Maar taps into which, consequently, elevates pre-loved luxury consignment, whose notable predecessors are the platforms, such as The Real Real, Tradesy, or Vestaire to a new experiential and aesthetic level. 

Run from the art studio in Brooklyn, NYC, Dora Maar “humanizes” pre-owned luxury consignment by introducing muses- women and men from all walks of life, with a distinctive point of view and a highly personalized style, as brand icons. The appeal behind the concept of a muse is that it goes beyond style inspiration. It is a way of representing beauty in all its diversity and as an authentic expression of real, everyday people, that shoppers can organically relate to. To find out more about Dora Maar, its evolution, and the fascinating idea behind it, I sat down with Lauren over a Zoom chat. This is what Dora Maar is, in her own words.

Real people as brand Muses

Dora Maar, a 20th-century French photographer (of Croatian origin), painter, and poet, most famously known as Picasso’s lover and a muse, is the inspiration behind the platforms name. Similar to what Dora was to Picasso, the muses are the central inspiration behind the brand. 

So, how does one become a Dora Maar muse?

 “There is no recipe”, explains Lauren. “Being a muse is not boxed in a particular way of being, looking, or acting. A lot of muses come through other muses. Technology connects people, and it helps you find people with a cool point of view or a cool style. We build excitement around a lifestyle and someone’s story told through their lifestyle and pieces that they wear. For example, one muse who loves feminine is a fan of Ferretti, and a customer who loves feminine style is going to appreciate the muse’s personality, how they live their life, so the bond between the muse and the customer is psychological rather than objectified. Collections change from season to season, but people stay true to their aesthetics. Understanding this makes us able to target a customer more organically”.

But Dora Maar was not just a muse. The platform gives homage to her as an artist in her own right, and this is further reflected in what it means to be a muse on Dora Maar. 

“We turn the word muse on its head a bit. To be a muse doesn’t have to be one-sided. Dora served as Picasso’s inspiration, yes, but she also inspired others through her art. Beyond aesthetics, we also love the two “aa''s in her name. She represented power and voice and she inspired us to call all these great people on the platform muses. We’re inspired by creation and artistry, and fashion IS artistry. We take this concept and apply it to a 21st-century e-commerce company”, adds Lauren. 

The inspiration behind storytelling in Dora Maar

For Lauren, the inspiration to include storytelling as a part of pre-loved luxury retail came mainly from two sources: her academic background in costume studies at NYU and her work experience at an online luxury retailer, Moda Operandi.

 “Costume studies at NYU include a mish-mash of people: from academics to the industry insiders. It includes the anthropological study of fashion; tracking how fashion has changed in different periods and different parts of the world, and how changing rules in society affected fashion, as well as understanding the power of fashion and how it affects people’s lives. There’s a lot of that in Dora Maar. I had an opportunity to be a part of a team that curated an exhibition on how plus-size women have been treated since the 17th century to now. We studied where the size connotations came from, how bodies have been viewed through the lens of fashion, and how stigma related to bodies came to be. You get to understand why the industry is the way it is,” recalls Lauren.

A more concrete idea for integrating storytelling into retail came from Moda Operandi.

“The way Moda does designer storytelling is unlike any other platform. I think that is so relevant to what is happening right now, they are about how to put a brand into the context of people. Working for Moda, I experienced how knowing about the person behind the garment is much more fun than just handling the garment itself as an impersonal object. Knowing who the designer was behind a pretty top added a rich layer to luxury shopping, and I wanted to translate this to Dora Maar”, explains Lauren.

Communicating Sustainability Transparently through Actions

Quite different from the “loud” and buzz-word swarmed industry, the way Dora Maar communicates sustainability requires no familiar hype. Rather, its sustainability commitment is visible from the way shoppers relate to the platform, and one another via the platform. 

“While giving a handout saying we saved the x-amount of water or trees is cute, I don’t think it creates a foundational change. Only when you think things through is how you create a change. Humanizing what saving the environment looks like and giving it a face. Saving the trees is about saving the people. If we are creating a platform where women and men are excited to understand other people’s stories and there’s a real emotional connection to that, they’d want to buy from something that means something, even more. They want a community where they shop consciously without even needing to think about it, and if we can get to the point where shoppers don’t even have to think that they are shopping sustainably but they want to because it means something and it adds value to their life this is where the industry makes a real change. I hope the industry starts educating why it is smart to make those choices rather than doing a buzzy marketing campaign. I don’t think that sticks with people”, explains Lauren.

Dora Maar is also upgrading traditional luxury in that it consciously promotes diversity, and it is a well-known fact that luxury fashion has not always been inclusive. 

For Lauren, inclusion and diversity are personal, and she adds: “People’s voices in fashion need to be heard. We live three-dimensional lives, and to be able to breathe life into the garments through whoever’s story is so much more interesting. I am biracial myself, so that representation is very important to me. At Dora Maar, we have an opportunity and a way of representing real people and their different ways of being and dressing and share that with our community. In this way, we are helping to create an ethical world.”

Storytelling is Circularity 

If we think about the impact of stories in our histories, personal or collective, once they are told, they become a legacy of an entire community. At Dora Maar, both a Muse and a shopper actively engage in the process of telling and sharing stories. This concept, translated to fashion retail, means recycling and recycling is circularity.

“A lot of our Muses will buy from other Muses, explains Lauren. “The journey doesn’t end after Dora Maar. The person shares it among their network. The item will be recycled again, and maybe come back to the Dora Maar store. The goal is for everyone to inspire someone in life. It doesn’t matter if you are the muse on the side of the muse that buys the item.”

There is also an aspect of upcycling in Dora Maar, as a part of which Lauren announced as DMIY (“Dora Maar Do It Yourself”) series. Pieces that don’t get sold are either donated or upcycled, and golden Chanel buttons are paired with an Old Navy sweater for an elevated look. This is just one way the Dora Maar team gets creative with pre-loved luxury pieces, down to the smallest detail.

Appreciating the pre-loved luxury as a piece of fine art 

Whereas buying antique furniture or fine art is considered desirable, and even prestigious, buying and selling pre-loved fashion still has some stigma attached to it. It has only been recently, thanks to luxury consignment platforms, such as The Real Real and Tradesy that pre-loved luxury shopping started being seen as valuable.

Lauren comments on the fine art-luxury analogy adding: “One of the most important things, when you’re buying art, is the origin, what were all the hands that exchanged the piece, where did it start for, who owned it, when did it change hands. If you miss any of those pieces, with fine arts, you start questioning whether it is a fake. If we treat luxury as art once it leaves its original maker, why don’t we treat it as art afterward? Why throw it in the consignment bin and hope someone finds it? Why not treat fashion as fine art? Why not give provenance to it? For instance, this piece came from Chanel, then it came to our Muse and this is how she wore it, and now you can have it. It’s treating fashion as Art. This process gives entirely new meaning to these items in the fashion industry.”  

The Future of Luxury?

To conclude the story about Dora Maar, I asked Lauren for her opinion about the post-COVID fashion scene. 

“I’m even thinking that post-COVID it may be a return to maximalism where people just want more, more and more. They’d want to go out and show their style. The effects of COVID have been so detrimental that we’re starting to buy with value in mind: What makes sense? Who’s behind those brands? Who is making a difference? Whose brand value aligns with my values? I don’t think we’ll return to selfishness. Yes, we will enjoy fun and exuberant dressing, but with an intention behind it: “I got this dress from a local designer and I love this brand and its mission”. We’ll see more and more shoppers wanting to tell a story of a brand, I think. As a platform that enables that, we have to be authentically ourselves and share that point of view. It’s not enough to be just “a pretty platform”.” 

…

In some sense, Dora Maar and my aunt Veronique, the two storytellers from different times and geographical spaces, have something in common. Their stories are appealing because they are authentically and uniquely linked to the way they see and wear fashion. If we think about priorities, which are to create a more ethical and responsible fashion industry, then storytelling is the way to go. Stories travel beyond times, body types, and physical spaces. 

They engage people in a meaningful way. As we see in the example of Dora Maar, muses and shoppers are co-creators of fashion and its values, and their stories, which transcend their closets, will eventually become a part of the more conscious “fashion collective”. This is how we make visible changes in the mindsets of shoppers and retailers. To start the journey, visit Dora Maar.

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