While shopping for suits, a man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found a beige jacket he liked, but what was in its pocket has left internet users in hysterics.
The poster, Zach Carty, told Newsweek that he ended up not buying the suit because it was too small, and partly because he found a wedding speech in the jacket pocket.
In a viral post shared on Reddit on Sunday, under the username u/zachismyname89, Carty holds up the folded piece of paper that he found hidden inside the suit jacket pocket while searching for the tag.
The wedding toast is from two people named Val and Jack, which they wrote for their friend, Tony, and his wedding to his wife Ally.
The toast recounts the friends’ years at college, first jobs in New York, as well as ski trips, traveling and game nights within the friendship group.
A screenshot of the viral video shows the beige suit and the wedding toast hidden inside it. A screenshot of the viral video shows the beige suit and the wedding toast hidden inside it. u/zachismyname89
“Someone bought, used, then returned a suit from H&M, and left their wedding toast in the pocket”, the Reddit caption says.
“I get being tight on money, but an H&M suit is like $100, at least get it dry cleaned first”.
Carty told Newsweek: “I had no idea what it had been through that night at the wedding so I didn’t want to risk getting something used and abused.
“I only stumbled upon it because I was trying to find the size tag for the suit in the pockets since they are hidden in there sometimes.
“Just thought it was funny that someone would cheap out on an already affordable H&M suit just to use it for one day and return it.”
Newsweek reached out to H&M for comment.
The wedding toast was from named Val and Jack, which they wrote for their friend, Tony, and his wedding to his wife Ally. The wedding toast was from named Val and Jack, which they wrote for their friend, Tony, and his wedding to his wife Ally. u/zachismyname89
While used items may not appeal to all buyers, thrift stores and other second hand retailers are actually big in America. According to a report from Capital One Shopping, the U.S. secondhand market generated an estimated $53 billion in revenue in 2023 alone.
There are over 25,000 resale, consignment, and not-for-profit resale shops in the U.S., and about 16-18 percent of Americans shop at thrift stores each year. Buying from thrift stores saves shoppers an average of $1,760 per year, the report said.
The post quickly went viral on social media and it has so far received over 3,900 upvotes and 182 comments on the platform.
One user, Siempre_maria, said: “I’m pretty sure my husband left both of our wedding vows in the front pocket of his suit, but it was definitely rented.”
Lois_sanb0rn said: “Now I’m tempted to slip random terrible wedding speeches into formal wear pockets lol.”
While OkCopy4627 added: “Jack got all the good lines.”
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
These are the stories making headlines in fashion on Monday.
Malone Souliers launches “Emily in Paris” shoe collection In anticipation of the third season of “Emily in Paris,” Malone Souliers teamed up with the show for a “très chic” shoe collaboration. The collection boasts 11 new styles in a variety of colorways inspired by the characters of the show, including The Emily, The Camille and The Gabriel. “Like everyone else, I became obsessed with ‘Emily in Paris’ when it first aired in 2020,” Mary Alice, the brand’s creative director, said in a statement. “The witty humor is what first drew me in, but then I couldn’t take my eyes off the outfits. I knew it would be the perfect show for Malone Souliers to collaborate with.” The collection is available to shop Dec. 6 at the brand’s Mount Street flagship store and online at MaloneSouliers.com. {Fashionista inbox}
The rise of resale in New York retail For The Cut, Emilia Petrarca interviews Emma Rodelius, founder of Lower East Side vintage shop Rogue, about how the neighborhood has shifted retail trends in New York. Rodelius calls the Lower East Side “the new Soho” and adds that it’s gone too corporate for her. Nostalgic resale and vintage finds for accessible prices are what attract customers to what she has coined the “Vintage District.” With the help of pop-up events, influencer closet sales and a strong social media presence, Rodelius says, “This is going to be an empire.” {The Cut}
The body behind the Y/Project x Jean Paul Gaultier body morph prints For Vogue, José Criales-Unzueta talks to the literal man in the multi-colored body-illusion graphics Glenn Martens designed in collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier, which have been spotted on A-listers galore. Javier Des Leon, Spanish model and content creator, describes the birth of the print saying, “Glenn was interested in me, so they asked me to be a part of the next collection. I didn’t know what I would do or what the process would be like. They just told me I had to be nude and pose as a statue. It was a simple process, just working the lighting and trying to find the right pose.” When asked what it feels like to see his body on runways, tabloids and celebrities, Des Leon says, “I’m just very proud to have been a part of this and grateful to Glenn and his team. He’s a genius, and I love the direction in which he’s leading fashion right now.” {Vogue}
In late May, Amazon opened its first clothing store in a sprawling suburban mall outside Los Angeles. Like most physical retailers these days, Amazon Style, as it’s called, aims to bring a little something extra to the brick-and-mortar experience, as some might do with plush coffee bars or rotating art installations.
Amazon Style, though, has technology. Each clothing tag comes equipped with a QR code shoppers can scan to see more details about the garment, like sizing, colors and customer ratings. Rather than wrangle an armful of jeans into a fitting room, customers can curate a list of pieces the’d like to try on or rather purchase directly. Clothes bought online can be shipped in-store, where shoppers can try them on and begin the process over again.
It’s hard to argue with the convenience — but even more appealing, maybe, are those QR codes themselves, which supply consumers with a sea of information at their fingertips.
Retail analysts have been teasing digital product tags for years. London-based trend-forecasting agency WGSN, for one, began discussing them back in 2015, predicting they would hit the mass market by 2024. Amazon Style is the most widespread implementation to date, but slowly, fashion is catching on: Mulberry announced this summer it would be adding what’s called “near-field communication” (NFC) tags to all of its products by 2025, beginning with the pre-owned bags in its internal resale program.
Digital tags offer a whole host of benefits, from curbing counterfeiting to, in a perfect world, supporting transparency all throughout the product’s lifecycle. Yet this is technology that has to be implemented correctly, and with a commitment to use it in the long-term. In today’s supply chain turmoil, this may be easier said than done — but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
According to WGSN, there are two types of digital product tags that will reshape the retail landscape in the near future: radio-frequency identification, or RFIDs, which use radio frequencies to track and identify objects and will be a key tool for retailers’ back-of-house operations, like inventory tracking and real-time product location; and digital IDs, into which both Amazon Style and Mulberry’s efforts fall.
“We’ll see digital IDs really start to hit mainstream over the next few years, giving consumers highly detailed information about an item, from where the product has been and how it was manufactured, by simply scanning a QR code,” says Candice Medeiros, a strategist for WGSN Insight. “This could reshape current-day models and offer consumers more peace of mind.”
Inside the Amazon Style clothing store at The Americana at Brand mall in Glendale, Calif.
Photo: Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
Consider Mulberry, which is rolling out its own NFC-enabled tags — powered by Product Cloud software platform Eon — as we speak. Its take on digital IDs enables customers to access a personalized digital guide about their item, featuring content and services around authentication, repair and resale. This, Mulberry believes, will create a direct and ongoing connection between the label and its customers for the entire lifecycle of the product.
“We take great pride in creating objects that are made to last, to be loved and passed onto the next generation,” said Mulberry’s CEO Thierry Andretta, in a statement. “Through the digital ID, Mulberry can offer customers increased transparency into the unique journeys of our products, deliver services such as lifetime repair, buy-back and resale, and ensure that every bag can have multiple lives.”
Scroll to Continue
Indeed, Mulberry is intently focused on sustainability. A member of the Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Task Force, Mulberry aims to achieve net-zero status by 2035. In 2021, as part of its 50th anniversary, the house announced its Made to Last Manifesto, an ambitious commitment to transform the business to a regenerative and circular model, encompassing the entire supply chain, by 2030.
Circularity, however, is fashion’s big white whale, the largest global logistics challenge the world over. Can digital tags help it get there?
Natasha Franck, Eon’s founder and CEO, created the platform in 2017 to help solve the most systemic barriers to sustainable business models in fashion retail. It became immediately clear, she recalls, that the underlying enabler to a truly sustainable — i.e., circular — industry was product identity: How could we turn physical products into intelligent assets that brands could monetize, increasing the profitability, intelligence and sustainability of each and every physical product?
“Today within fashion, brands are capturing a fraction of the value they possibly could from each product, and that’s why we’re seeing this tip of brands moving to uniquely ID each and every item for its entire lifecycle,” says Franck. “In a few months time, we’ll be looking back and thinking, Wow, I can’t believe that once upon a time, products didn’t have identities.”
Eon’s technology works fairly intuitively: When consumers are done with their Alexa satchel, they can tap their smartphone on the piece’s RFID tag and be presented with a range of resale options via the brand’s in-house Mulberry Exchange; that bag’s new owner will have access to the item’s past lives, including how it was authenticated or if and how it was repaired. This, Franck explains, will help foster a new kind of relationship between brands and their customers. Right now, this is entirely transactional, ending at the point of sale. But digital IDs like Mulberry’s shift that interaction into something more intimate, rooted in ongoing, personalized service for that customer and that customer only.
Digital tags have use cases beyond commerce. Adrich, a smart-label platform that’s considered the world’s first consumption tracker, monitors product usage in real-time to enable timely replenishments of consumer packaged goods, from body wash to olive oil. With Adrich’s technology, product labels are able to understand that a bottle of hand soap, say, runs out after 20 pumps, reordering you a new bottle after 15.
“The technology has evolved at the same time the use case has evolved,” says Al Sambar, a general partner at XRC Labs, a New York City-based venture-capital fund and startup accelerator focused on retail technology that invested in Adrich earlier this year. “Say you’re inside your closet and you realize your denim looks faded and you want to reorder a new pair — wouldn’t it be nice if you had a code that could automatically make reordering available?”
It would be nice. So much so that, for shoppers, digital tags may soon make the leap from a nicety to something of an expectation. In fact, WGSN forecasts that on-demand expectations are set to increase, making it essential for retailers to invest in tools that give consumers more transparency around the location and detail of their merchandise. And amid ongoing supply chain disruptions, forged by the pandemic and geopolitical tensions, this technology is well on its way to becoming foundational for retail resiliency. The numbers don’t lie: New data from Adobe finds that consumers have seen over 60 billion out-of-stock messages in 2022 alone — a 235% increase compared to 2019.
“That’s done massive damage to consumer trust and loyalty,” says Medeiros. “Going forward, it will be important for retailers to invest in end-to-end inventory optimization.”
Aside from warehouses and fulfillment centers, RFIDs can be placed on cargo containers, which can ensure more precise visibility of their material flow. For mass retailers that have heavier fulfillment needs, Medeiros finds that these digital tags are helping to smooth unpredictable obstacles in the supply chain, as much as in consumers’ everyday wardrobes.
“In times of hardship, innovation thrives, and while a lot of this technology is not new, digital tags are providing tangible, real-time relief across the retail sector,” she says. “What’s great about these tools is that they take everyday touch-points and elevate the customer journey while also empowering them.”
On an otherwise conventional Friday morning during Paris Fashion Week in late September, with flotillas of black cars arriving at salubrious venues scattered across the city, a showroom in the 16th arrondissement was about to host a different kind of coveted ticketed event: a trip back in time — specifically, to the vaunted Phoebe Philoera at Celine (a.k.a. Céline).
“People went nuts for these pieces,” says Sofia Bernardin, co-founder of Re-See, which hosted the weekend-long archive sale dedicated to the Philo years at the French heritage brand at its newly-opened Paris showroom. “There are definitely brands that follow trends, and there are brands that focus on longevity and timelessness — that’s what Phoebe Philo did.”
In order to make the event possible, the Paris-based online luxury consignment platform collaborated with Martina Lohoff, the founder of Old Céline Archive, an Instagram page that handpicks and sells pieces from the British designer’s tenure at the house. Lohoff — who lives and works in Germany — contributed 100 items from her personal collection; Re-See sourced around 100 more from other vendors across the globe. Pieces from some of the most epoch-defining shows were up for grabs for collectors and fans (a few hundred customers), with prices ranging from €500 to €1,900.
The Yves Klein body print dress from Céline Spring 2017 collection by Phoebe Philo, re-sold by Re-See.
Photo: Courtesy of Re-See
Bernardin, a former advertising executive at American Vogue, founded Re-See with Sabrina Marshall, who used to be the fashion editor at Self Service, in 2013. The business was born from conversations between the two Paris-based Americans about the collections they missed out on when they were young fashion assistants with meager salaries. Celine is just one of a number of luxury brands it stocks on its site.
“What if there was a place where you could find all of those iconic moments in fashion without having to sift through hours of junk on eBay?,” asks Bernardin over Zoom from her office in Paris. (Absent from the call: Marshall, who was at a client meeting.) “A place that was really curated and brought back all of these moments in one.”
Initially, Re-See sourced its inventory from contacts in Paris, as well as the founders’ native cities, New York (Bernardin) and Los Angeles (Marshall). Word of the project quickly spread through the industry, which enabled connections with various editors, stylists, designers and collectors in each corner of the globe. Today, Re-See counts 20 employees in its Paris office, and works with a team of ambassadors stationed in key cities like New York, Zurich, Seoul and Tokyo — ranging from women in their 20s to septuagenarian former VIP client managers at luxury boutiques, who activate their networks to produce an extensive catalog of fashion, accessories and fine jewelry, ranging from 1930s silk gowns to 1970s Celine to 2017 Balenciaga.
Unlike on other platforms where vendors will upload photos of products, sell and package them themselves, Re-See streamlines the process by visiting clients’ houses and helping clean their closets or making it easy to send pieces directly to the Paris showroom, where they’re inspected before being photographed for the site. Each piece undergoes a restoration from the Re-See team, breathing new life into old garments and ensuring they hold their original value to the highest degree possible.
Bernardin and Marshall wanted to distinguish Re-See in a growing resale market that includes players like Depop, Vestiaire Collective, Grailed and The RealReal by creating an ultra-luxury, fashion-forward resale environment with inspiring and authenticated inventory — a place where you can not just shop past collections, but also come back and learn about them. The point isn’t to get a discounted item, necessarily (though it’s possible), but to find the ones that got away.
“When we worked in fashion editorial, you had to have the latest collections as they dropped in store,” Bernardin says. “When the season ended and the moment was over, you couldn’t be seen wearing them anymore. There’s something so wrong about that because when you have these amazing, iconic pieces, you should be able to wear them for years.”
Earlier this year, WWD reported that while the volume of transactions is smaller at Re-See than its competitors, its average basket is higher than the industry norm, rising to just under €1,300 in the first half of 2022. Its bestselling brands are Hermès, Chanel, Celine, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga; its top markets are the U.S., France and the UK.
Scroll to Continue
Bernardin emphasizes how Re-See witnessed “a huge change in momentum” during the Covid-19 pandemic, as consumer mentality around resale completely changed. People who never really considered buying secondhand before felt like they wanted to positively contribute to the environment through their consumption habits. On the other hand, people who never thought about selling their wares were spurred on by a Marie Kondo-esqe desire to purge unnecessary and unwanted belongings, and began exploring resale during global lockdowns.
“Any taboo was washed away,” Bernardin says. “It catapulted us into a whole new universe of resale.”
“For us, it’s not just about selling someone’s secondhand clothes,” Bernardin says. “It’s about inspiring people to want to shop better.”
Re-See is having some “interesting dialogues” with brands who are considering entering the space, according to Bernardin, but she remains tight-lipped with regards to names. This month, though, it announced a partnership with Alaïa — one of its top performers since its launch — on an exclusive sale of curated pieces from its archive.
In a statement, Alaïa’s CEO Myriam Serrano said the collaboration with Re-See is a “significant initiative to put circularity into action.”
Even with backers eyeing up potential investment, Bernardin is forthright about her and Marshall’s intentions: Since day one, they have refused capital from investors and brands that they felt weren’t a good fit. (In September 2022, Re-See launched a funding round as it eyes global expansion.)
“We love forming these partnerships with these people that are as passionate about fashion and these moments in fashion as we are,” she says, with reference to collaborators like Alexander Fury, with whom Re-See hosted an event in Paris in July showcasing his extraordinary haute couture collection.
With a stateside outpost in the works, Bernardin reflects upon the last nine years and the slow and steady ascendance of Re-See.
“Luxury is a brick-by-brick approach,” she says. “And the most important thing is to have a point of view. We want to be the Chanel or Hermès of resale, and that takes time.”
