It began with a few thousand handbags, dresses and shoes that belonged to friends. In 2009, in Paris, Fanny Moizant and Sophie Hersan launched a website called Vestiaire de Copines, roughly the girlfriends' wardrobe, with about 3,000 pre-owned items offered by people they knew.
Moizant had just finished a degree at the French fashion institute when she teamed up with Hersan, who had worked as a stylist. They were not building a tech company in the usual sense. They were turning a habit among friends, swapping and selling beautiful clothes, into a place where strangers could do it with confidence. The idea was ordinary, even cosy. What made it hard was trust: a Chanel bag sold by someone you have never met needs checking, photographing and authenticating.
The investors who came in tell the story of luxury taking resale seriously: Conde Nast, Kering, Tiger Global, SoftBank, Generation and others.
The wardrobe name did not travel. In 2012, when the site launched in the United Kingdom, it became Vestiaire Collective, a name that worked in any language. More co-founders had joined along the way, including Sebastien Fabre, Alexandre Cognard, Henrique Fernandes and Christian Jorge. Expansion followed: the United States in 2014, wider Europe in 2015, then Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia by 2017.
The investors who came in tell the story of luxury taking resale seriously: Conde Nast, Kering, Tiger Global, SoftBank, Generation and others. In 2020 Vestiaire became the 11th French unicorn. A year later it earned B Corp certification, and in 2022 it bought the American resale firm Tradesy. Then came a bolder, more uncomfortable move. It announced a three-year plan to ban fast fashion brands, starting with 30 brands in 2022 and 33 in 2023, even though such items filled a lot of listings.
The price of growing up showed in the leadership. Maximilian Bittner became chief executive, and in October 2025 Bernard Osta replaced him. In January 2026, after sixteen years, Fanny Moizant announced her own departure, leaving Hersan as the only original co-founder still at the company. A crowdfunding round in February 2024 raised around 3.5 million euros, more than three times its target, from customers themselves.
Today it operates in over 70 countries. The lesson is understated: a business built on a favour among friends can become global, but only if you protect the trust that made the favour work, even when it costs you listings.