Émilie Gagnon, founder of secondhand fashion brand MXMLST, is quickly becoming a fixture in the reselling scene. After launching her brand in Ottawa two years ago, she’s since moved to Calgary and gotten involved in their local community.

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She’s worked in styling for the film and television industry, exhibited at dozens of local markets and is now co-hosting a market of her own with Vol 1 Vintage at Bù Vintage Shoppe, a new Calgary storefront, on Oct. 22. She’s also dipping into wholesale, working to deliver bulk orders to clients.

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Emilie wanted to chat to The Vintage Seeker about the current landscape of the secondhand fashion industry and opportunities for resellers for an issue of her newsletter, The MXMLST Edit.

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We were happy to oblige — and it’s now available to read or listen to!

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An excerpt of the conversation follows below.

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Emilie Gagnon, MXMLST: We know that shopping secondhand is one of the many actions we can take to help reduce waste in the fashion industry. You've talked to a lot of people in the industry, what are some of the benefits of shopping secondhand? And are there any other actions to consider that align with those benefits?

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Kristina Urquhart, The Vintage Seeker: Reducing waste, as you mentioned, is of course important. The fashion industry is notorious for its waste — both for its manufacturing processes and for the sheer volume of clothes it produces, especially when we are talking fast fashion.

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What can we as a vintage buying and selling community do? We can continue to talk to our families, our friends, and the public about the value of vintage and resale. About the value of what a reseller does. I’m a big fan of showing your work. It helps to educate people on what goes into being a seller. You and I both know it’s not about grabbing an item for cheap and marking it up. There’s so much that goes into it — so tell people about it!

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If we get more people buying some of their stuff secondhand over the next decade, or get them to think more deeply about what they’re buying, I think that’s a huge win.

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That education, in my experience, has to be focused on the positive benefits. People do not want to be shamed for their choices, and they shouldn’t be. The reality is, there are a million and one reasons why someone might choose to or need to buy something new. What we can do is just keep coming together as a community to tout the benefits of secondhand.

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The problem I see, really, is awareness — people don’t have easy access to the information. They can’t find your sole-proprietor shop in the Internet ether. Fast fashion makes it extremely easy for them to shop, and it’s crazy difficult to compete with when the first page of Google results is all Amazon and Shein.

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People don’t know what they don’t know. It’s the job of the reselling community to keep pushing out there.

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Thanks again to Emilie and MXMLST!

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Listen to the podcast, read the full interview and subscribe to The MXMLST Edit here.

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