Tunbridge Wells’ Through Your Wardrobe is rewriting the rules of fashion retail
The rise of pre-loved fashion….
In an era when Britain’s high streets continue to battle rising costs, changing consumer habits and fierce online competition, one independent fashion business is proving there is still room for a different kind of retail experience.
What began as a single rail of second-hand clothing at a café has grown into one of Kent’s most successful pre-loved fashion businesses. Today, Through Your Wardrobe operates stores in Tunbridge Wells and Rye, East Sussex, with a reputation for carefully-curated fashion, extraordinary finds and a business model built around extending the life of clothing.
For co-founder Charlotte Lyon, the journey started almost by accident.
“Gabby and I have run a label before. We’ve done a new women’s wear store previously, kind of 20 years ago,” she explains. “I was a PA for many years and that job led me into managing buildings, and one of the buildings had a second-hand shop slash café that started over Covid. The lady said ‘Listen, I’m emigrating to Canada next month. Do you want the business?’. I said ‘Oh, well, yeah’.”
“I love going to bricks-and-mortar stores to see the feel of it, how they’ve put it together.”
That modest beginning would become the foundation for something much bigger. The first dedicated Through Your Wardrobe store opened in Rye in March 2022. Neither Charlotte nor co-founder Gabby Icke knew quite what to expect.
“We knew a lot about the clothing, but we weren’t sure how the pre-loved was going to be received,” says Charlotte. “It was, well, let’s just see what happens.”
The response exceeded every expectation.
“It went absolutely mad. We went from around 200 garments to about 20,000 garments in about two months.”
That explosion in popularity reflects a wider shift in attitudes towards second-hand fashion. Once regarded as a niche market, pre-loved clothing is an established part of mainstream shopping habits.
“There is so much in the second-hand market,” Charlotte says. “It’s verging on obscene. We do four appointments a day in each store, seven days a week, and we take a maximum of 20 garments per appointment, but if I opened another 50 appointments a day I’m certain I’d fill them.”
At the heart of the business is a straightforward consignment model. Customers bring in clothing, accessories and designer pieces for assessment. Through Your Wardrobe researches every item, agrees a sale price with the owner and then splits the proceeds equally once the item sells.
The success of that model depends heavily on curation. While thousands of items pass through the business, only carefully-selected pieces make it on to the rails.
“I think the curation of what we’re offering is quite important,” says Charlotte. “It’s very specifically done.”
That careful selection process has also resulted in some remarkable discoveries.
“We get some amazing bits,” says Gabby, who had a career dressing high-profile personalities including Princess Diana. Among them is a rare couture piece with a direct connection to one of Britain’s most famous actresses.
“There’s only two of them in the world, and the other one was worn by Emma Watson to the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and we’ve got the other one.”
The store has also acquired garments linked to one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
“We’ve also got some items of clothing that were made for Angelina Jolie,” Gabby says. “They’ve got her name in them. The girl that was working with her at the time was gifted them and now they’re here.”
Yet for Gabby, the appeal of fashion is not about labels alone.
“You can mix Angelina Jolie’s shirt, an Yves Saint Laurent shirt that we’ve got with a pair of Gap jeans or Marks & Spencer trousers, and I think that’s even cooler,” she says. “The mixture of everything allows you to be much more adventurous.”
That philosophy reflects a broader change in how consumers approach style. Increasingly, shoppers are seeking individuality rather than simply following trends.
The rise of pre-loved fashion is also driven by growing concerns about quality and sustainability. For Gabby, the economics of modern fashion have become difficult to ignore.
“I’m very fashion-led. I love fashion designers, but prices have gone absolutely astronomically insane at the moment,” she says.
Rather than encouraging shoppers to abandon new clothing altogether, she advocates a more balanced approach.
“I’m not advocating that everybody should buy pre-loved all the time, but I think it should be part of everybody’s wardrobes.”
Her argument is simple: invest in well-made garments that stand the test of time.
“If you buy really good classic pieces, for example, you can have those in your wardrobe for 30 years.”
She is equally critical of the declining quality found across much of the modern fashion market.
“So many brands are guilty,” she says. “The quality of things, you look at it, you pick it up and you think ‘How much for something that’s mass produced, badly made?’. I just think it’s criminal.”
Alongside sustainability, Through Your Wardrobe is championing something else many retailers have lost: experience.
“Retail is changing,” says Gabby. “You’ve got to make it an experience now.”
That belief recently inspired a collaboration with internationally-acclaimed fashion illustrator Connie Lim, whose clients include Chanel, Dior, Miu Miu and Alexander McQueen.
Hosted at Tunbridge Wells’s Royal Wells Hotel, the event combined fashion, art and community, with Gabby styling model Federica Magistrali in a series of dramatic pre-loved looks while Lim guided guests through clothed life drawing sessions.
“It was just an amazing evening,” says Charlotte. “It brought together all of the things that we love to do. It also helps us reach out more into the community to discuss all the things that we do.”
Gabby says: “We were picking them with a view, this would be interesting to draw. It’s a really good opportunity to showcase that we’ve got different things that you just wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else."
For both founders, the evening represented the future of independent retail: creating memorable experiences that cannot be replicated online - for example, Through Your Wardrobe hosts cocktail evenings where groups of friends can visit their stores, socialise and immerse themselves in quality pieces.
“I’m not an online shopper,” says Gabby. “I love going to bricks-and-mortar stores to see the feel of it, how they’ve put it together.”
As Britain’s high streets continue to evolve, Through Your Wardrobe offers a compelling blueprint. Part fashion destination, part community hub and part sustainability project, it demonstrates that retail’s future may not lie in selling more things but in helping people discover better-quality ones.
