Vintage stores are the new frontier of the fashion community A new experiment by Dsquared2 in Milan seems to suggest this

Yesterday, in Milan, Dsquared2 inaugurated its takeover of the celebrated vintage store Cavalli&Nastri. For two weeks, several unique runway pieces from collections spanning SS05 through FW25 will adorn the store's windows and displays, while inside, a selection of ready-to-wear garments and accessories from archive pieces starting with the SS17 collection onwards will be available for purchase. Beyond the shopping angle, the initiative is interesting because it is perhaps the most concrete one enacted locally in Milan so far by a brand activating an institution like Cavalli&Nastri, around which a large part of the city's fashion community revolves.

The initiative is also an important gesture of openness toward the world of vintage and archive on the part of a fashion brand, especially given its deeply physical and "situated" nature within Milan's vintage shopping ecosystem. Dsquared2 is indeed among the brands that perform best on the secondhand market — something, as a brand spokesperson explained to us, the company itself has noticed and decided to tap into. As mentioned, this project is the most organic among those seen so far from luxury brands, including Armani Archivio, the Bag Bazaar by Coachtopia and Depop in New York, and a handful of others. But what might these projects mean for fashion?

Material and immaterial advantages

That the secondhand market is booming is by now a well-known fact. As BoF explained earlier this year, the resale volume in fashion is expected to reach 317 billion dollars next year, and 59% of global consumers consider it a valid shopping option. Yet the report shows that secondhand fashion is a feast from which the primary market is only picking up the crumbs.

According to BoF, there are three ways fashion could participate in the secondary market: partnering with an existing platform, building a branded platform with external providers, or investing internally to build a fully proprietary structure. The economic advantages are modest, but for the brands themselves, the real gain is immaterial: increasing engagement with existing customers and recruiting potential new ones, collecting product data to improve current production, boosting brand trust and recognition, as well as dealing a blow to the counterfeit market.

The real issue is, of course, pricing: the secondhand market self-regulates on this point, but when brands step in, prices are set from above and are, in fact, quite high. Already last year, BCG warned in its report that "affordability is a key factor driving demand for secondhand products, especially among aspirational consumers." In short, a brand wanting to enter this business cannot dream of imposing luxury prices, because the whole point of vintage is low prices — let's say, below 500 euros.

But without venturing further into that thorny debate, the collaboration between Dsquared2 and Cavalli&Nastri is notable precisely because it is not situated online but in a designer vintage store already frequented by a more upscale audience. And given that this very store sits within an unofficial "vintage district" of Milan, where Bivio, Pezze Vintage, Groupies, Back Stage, and Elevated Archives are all concentrated, the brand has effectively signalled its participation — and, one might say, its affinity with Milan's vintage community, which is far, far broader than that of boutique fashion shoppers alone. Which leads us to ask: is the new fashion community being built in vintage stores?

New spaces, new people

For decades, the fashion community has been built around codified moments: the runway show, the launch, the press event, the pop-up. These moments correspond to topical spaces that are often inaccessible — showrooms, boutiques, and the like. All times and spaces that convey brand identity in a controlled manner, where the customer is essentially a recipient. The vintage store, however, works in the opposite way: it is chaotic by definition, democratic by necessity, and built on a culture of hunting and discovery that is the antithesis of visual merchandising rules. It is a place where people meet as equals, where the shop assistant and the customer often share the same obsession, where word of mouth is worth more than any campaign.

When Dsquared2 chooses Cavalli&Nastri over opening a pop-up in a neutral space on Via Montenapoleone, it is implicitly acknowledging that that culture holds a value that cannot be replicated in-house and needs to unfold in its own spaces. Unlike what often happens in the luxury world, vintage shopping has become a communal activity for many people, especially the young. Buying vintage is the last real-life activity that allows everyone to connect with fashion without barriers. Through it, anyone can engage with fashion in a more human way than the often rigid protocols of luxury boutiques permit.

In this sense, Milan's vintage "outposts" have often become true communal spaces where people meet by chance or by appointment, where fashion is discussed without reverence and without a mandatory budget, where expertise is not certified by a credit card but by one's own taste and culture. It is a kind of sociality that traditional luxury struggles to generate, too busy guarding its own exclusivity. The community of the broader fashion world — not just its elite — is not built with invitations but with presence, and perhaps today vintage stores could truly become the most fertile ground on which fashion reconnects with those who genuinely love it.