vintage-fashion
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Elyce Arons and the business of keeping a friend’s good taste
A Kansas dorm-room friendship helped launch Kate Spade. At Frances Valentine, Elyce Arons is still turning shared jokes, vintage finds and clothes worth keeping into the next chapter.
1stDibs Put the Flea Market Online. The Hard Part Was the Checkout.
Rare chairs, real money, and the business of getting strangers to trust each other. How 1stDibs turned a Paris shopping habit into a public marketplace - and why shipping quotes now matter as much as taste.
Sandra Lifshits Is Teaching AI to Hunt for Vintage
After weekends in vintage markets and shifts inside New York shops, the product leader saw the real problem: secondhand shopping had plenty of inventory and precious little editing.
Retrofit
Retrofit is an AI-curated vintage marketplace that uses AI agents to sift through hundreds of thousands of secondhand listings, analyzing social media trends, sales data and personal style to surface pieces matched to a shopper's taste, size and budget. Founded in 2024 by Sandra Lifshits and Maddy Yip and backed by Y Combinator (W25), it standardizes photography and descriptions from partner vintage stores so shoppers get a clean, personalized feed instead of endless digging.
Buffalo Exchange
Buffalo Exchange is a family-owned resale fashion chain founded in Tucson, Arizona in 1974 that pioneered the buy-sell-trade model for secondhand clothing. Customers bring in gently used, on-trend clothing and accessories and receive cash or store trade on the spot, while shoppers browse a hand-picked mix of current styles, vintage finds and designer pieces at a fraction of retail. With roughly 40 stores across the United States and about 590 employees, Buffalo Exchange has built a business around affordable, sustainable style, keeping millions of garments in circulation each year and channeling small change into local charities through programs like Tokens for Bags.