It was at the Celine re-sees during Hedi Slimane’s days that Griffith met the clienteling team. Before that, he only knew his sales associate. Afterwards, he was invited by the brand to PSG soccer matches and on a boat for his birthday. “By the time you’ve come out of the Celine experience, you are thinking about what a wonderful show, amazing fabric, what a great experience, maybe I should buy that couture coat,” he says. “The re-see tends to kick off those moments.”
For those not spending enough to get them to re-see as a VIC, the way they’re introduced to the collection is on social media. This is how most consumers first engage with collections, and re-sees create a second — and more intimate — moment for the pieces online, enabling brands to prolong the momentum, says Melbourne.
Some users see content from the VICs themselves. Of Dior, Griffith says, “they let us shoot, film, and the amount of questions and comments we have gotten on those videos, like, ‘Which one are you choosing? What’s the fabric?’ It really has been a great marketing tool for them.” On Chabbi and Lee’s videos, too, there are plenty of questions about materials and sizes — which they’re well poised to answer, after getting the full run-through.
It comes down to moneymaking potential, experts agree. Setting up a space evocative of the previous day’s runway, as many brands now do, with amped-up merchandising — as opposed to simple racks of clothing like the old days — is an expensive feat, Rodriguez says. “It’s a huge investment to replicate these shows.” It’s a shift from what was once a low-cost, utilitarian endeavor for brands to ensure industry professionals got what they needed on the backend.
