Exclusive: Burberry launches rental and resale with My Wardrobe HQ

“Our partnership with My Wardrobe HQ is complementary to our broader strategy to become climate positive by 2040, supporting the principles of a circular economy for luxury,” says Pam Batty, Burberry VP of corporate responsibility. “This includes expanding reuse, repair, donation and recycling routes and developing new partnerships and revaluation solutions.”

Burberry was one of the most-requested brands on My Wardrobe HQ’s peer-to-peer service before the brand partnership, says My Wardrobe HQ co-founder Tina Lake. The rental service is only available in the UK for now, but resale orders can ship across Europe, with scope to expand to the US next year.

Forty per cent of profits from each Burberry transaction on My Wardrobe HQ will be donated to Smart Works, the UK charity which provides high quality interview clothes and coaching to disadvantaged unemployed women. This give-back programme follows the blueprint of socially conscious designers like Bethany Williams, who donates profits from her upcycled collections to London-based womens’ charities. Burberry has donated inventory to Smart Works since 2013. My Wardrobe HQ chairwoman Jane Shepherdson, a British fashion executive famed for her creative roles bringing Topshop into fashion in the aughts and turning around Whistles, is also trustee and patron of the charity so helped link the two companies.

Partnering with rental and resale platforms can help to gauge production volumes, relevance of archive collections and broader consumer preference, says Adam Cochrane, analyst at Deutsche Bank Research. What’s more, the proliferation of rental and resale sites means large volumes of luxury goods are being rented and sold without brand involvement.

“Luxury brands have been slow to adopt a number of trends including e-commerce but we can expect further brands to go down the rental route, because control of brand distribution is paramount,” he adds.

My Wardrobe HQ’s Burberry campaign.

Misan Harriman for My Wardrobe HQ

Rental plus resale: covering all bases?

Brands have been hesitant to take on rental and resale because of heavy costs involved in cleaning, returns, inventory management and merchandising, leaving it to third-party platforms with built-in scale. However, encouraging luxury investment purchases for younger shoppers down the line for brands including Burberry makes it increasingly attractive, experts agree. Luxury resale heated up in 2021, becoming first-choice for brands aiming for more circular business models. Isabel Marant launched a proprietary resale site in June, Gucci began selling restored vintage via its retail platform Vault and brands from Balenciaga to Simone Rocha partnered with US resale platform The Realreal.