You’ll never again have to spend thousands of dollars on an item you’ll never wear again for a special occasion, or weekend in St. Barths, or yachting it up in Cannes. Armarium will do it all for you.
Founded by former fashion designer Alexandra Lind Rose and former head of PR at Salvatore Ferragamo – North America, Armarium is an on-demand app that brings the experience and perks of luxury shopping, to you. Think renting a complete ensemble that makes you feel like the royalty you are, without the four-digit (before the decimal) price tag, but with the perfect Instagram worthy shot.
I met these two lovely women during a recent press preview where we chatted about this new Age of Armarium. [Get it. Like the Age of Aquarius? Hahaha…Ohhh, forget it.]
First tell me where the idea came from and then we can go into … or we can start with your background and then go into where the idea came from.
Trisa Gregory: We have been friends for more than 10 years and knew each other through the industry. I was at Ferragamo as the head of communications for 10 years so that was predominantly my background in the industry. I came about Armarium from sort of a brand need and how can you give life to these statement pieces that come down the runway, aren’t bought by more commercial retailers because they’re kind of a one hit wonder and not very commercially viable. How can you get back to someone to rent those people to wear once, that further introduces them to the dream of the brand?
I think that very special that’s not in the market is very different than buying a $300 entry price accessory or wallet or something to a luxury brand. For me it was just like, once you get that product on someone’s back they become more in-tune and further introduced to the brand and then hopefully will become somewhat of a customer. It’s really for us a marketing and customer acquisition channel for the brands. Alex came about it from a customer need.
Alexandra Lind Rose: I’m a former fashion designer and my business was I would design high-end dresses, and would sell nationwide but I also had a very niche product clientele. My experience really is a lot with the client and fit and construction and all of that but long story short I closed my doors to my business and I was in the middle of a move and everything was in storage. I realized I didn’t have anything to wear to event that I was going to. I love more statement pieces, and I didn’t want to commit to buying a lot because I had so much in storage, all my clothes. The idea really came about in my head, I wish there was a service that offered these statement pieces that I could borrow, rent.
Then I was talking to a friend at a luxury firm and she was like, “You know, Trisha Gregory is working on the same idea.” We came together-
TG: We had lunch. (laughs)
ALR: -and she had it already all written out, get a little bit of a deck working. We came together and we partnered. That was really how it happened.
Where did the name come from?
ALR: Armarium is a Latin word, it’s the root word for where armoire comes from. It’s a place where precious things are kept. It’s like a cabinet or a vault. That’s really what the meaning is.
You work with a lot of famous stylists. For the new customer, how would they be able to work with them?
TG: You can download the app and chose to work with an in-house stylist which in our New York showroom is complimentary and it’s $150 for a house call in any of the cities that we have; primarily New York. However, if it’s one of the Style Brigade members, those are more internationally known names and we wanted to create that service to complement our higher price point. The brand matrix is incredibly special and quite avant-garde, so how can you access a stylist of this caliber to put that look together for you? It’s based on their hourly rate, so you can book it on the app and then we have stylist primarily in New York but also from the brigade in Los Angeles, San Francisco, South Florida, and we’ll be adding them to other cities.
The service piece of this is really important to us, and along the way of both of our careers it was … we’re in the industry but so many people that we’re friends with would come to us that aren’t in the industry and was like, “How can I access a stylist?” It’s not a personal shopper, it’s very different. As these stylists become so visible on Instagram and whatnot, it’s like, “Wow, I love her look. She thinks way outside the box. How can she help me on a consistent basis or just for my 40th birthday?” That was important for us to offer that for our customer.
How do you vet the designers that you house?
TG: We were talking about that earlier … it’s very luxury brand.
ALR: Very luxury brand and also we really need to think about our customer and the holes that we’re missing. I think certain stylish girls like this some will like this, some like the … all luxury brands offer something different, so we’re constantly trying to fill in the holes of what the customer needs. Also they all offer something different, really. Different point of views.
TG: We also want this to be not just gowns, so if we know like, Anthony Vaccarello makes a super sexy cocktail dress that’s a bit out of the box, we definitely want to approach that brand in terms of working with us. Or, you know, like a brand like Mugler is having sort of a revival or Sonia Rykiel, something that’s really interesting. How can we convey that new direction to our clientele, with those new designers behind the brand?
Then if we back up an established brand, like a Ferragamo or an Etro or Missoni, we try to buy very editorial avant-garde pieces, so very different from what you expect and find in a traditional retailer.
We were talking earlier about the importance of how you look good and feel good, could you talk about that again?
ALR: You know, our ambition is really … our customer, she loves fashion, she reads all the top fashion magazines and it’s discouraging when she’s like, maybe she can’t afford that $5,000 dress. It’s so discouraging because she knows she would look great in that dress, she needs to wear that dress and it’s so her. (laugh) It’s such a disappointment that maybe her financial option may be to just go to a regular store and buy something for $300 that she may never wear again, and that’s kind of discouraging. Whereas if she comes to Armarium, that $300 can get her a $4000 or $3000 gown or dress or maybe a top or something that she loves. It really all goes back to her self-esteem, how she feels when she goes out at night. It’s uplifting for her mood, all of that. We really love that when a girl rolls out of our showroom and she is so psyched … it just makes our day because we know that she’s going to have a great time.
TG: She comes back. We are lucky already to have a really high repeat customer average. We’ve even seen some customers rent the same piece twice. It’s really an educational tool for some of our customers. Maybe they’re not familiar with Mugler, they’re like, “I haven’t heard that brand since the 80’s.” It’s fun for them, they can go out and say, “Oh, did you know David Koma is now the designer of Mugler?” You know what I mean? They feel like they’re a little bit more in the loop. They also look and feel great.
ALR: It just offers them the experience. We give them the access to have the experience, without having to actually go and purchase the gown and own it.
You don’t only offer off-the-runway pieces either. You house vintage pieces, can you explain why you decided to do that?
ALR: Well because we feel that our customer isn’t just only interested in high luxury designers. She really loves all pieces. She loves anything cool, in general. That’s also a vintage top or a vintage dress. For her, she’s so sophisticated in her taste that the label … sometimes that doesn’t matter. It’s really just about the whole piece. She’s also about, sometimes being the only one in the room wearing something. That’s what vintage does, it allows you to be the only one in the world wearing this piece at a certain time. We’re very, very curated about our buy for vintage and we only buy really the super, super special pieces that maybe are too costly to own and maybe she would want to only wear once.
TG: Also she doesn’t have time to scour the globe for great vintage. She’s like, “I’d love for you guys to do this for me.” She’s busy. There’s a very big clientele of vintage customers out there, is what we’ve learned. They can be the only person who is wearing that piece.
ALR: There’s also the documentation just to go back to why we do this … if a girl goes out today, she’s documenting what she wears on Instagram. She may not be able to wear that again. That’s also really where we come from. It’s just, social media today, it’s so hard to re-wear your clothes sometimes.
TG: Supporting the virtual identity. (laughs) It’s very important to the fashionista.
And Armarium isn’t a selection only for formal events?
TG: No, I think for us we want to really get the girl out the door for all occasions. Not just a black tie or a wedding. We’re packing a lot of suitcases for the summer and think she’d very much, given Instagram, wants to match her wardrobe to her destinations. We want people to have fun with this.
ALR: We also want to say, we have a great group of stylists in house that are just complementary. We want customers and clients to pick up the phone at all times, talk to one of our stylists about sizing, fit, construction. That’s what they’re there for. Even though we have the Style Brigade, which is for hire, we have our in-house stylists that are there just to consult with customers all day long. We really just want our customers to know that. We don’t want them to get confused just about sizing and stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out, “I don’t know if I’m a this or a that, is this going to look good on me?” Our stylists are very educated in all the silhouettes, all the designers, how they fit, so they can easily walk the customer over the phone what would work for them, what wouldn’t. I think we just want customers to know that. We want this to be a very personalized service.