Collagerie Is a New E-comm Platform Founded by Former Vogue Editors to Take the Confusion Out of Online Shopping

Collagerie is a new shopping platform that is the brainchild of London-based editors Lucinda Chambers (above left) and Serena Hood (above right). Their aim: to demystify fashion. Collagerie will showcase a highly curated selection of products at just about every price point (from Rixxo to Jimmy Choo to Mango, for instance), along with styling advice, fashion stories meant to inspire ideas about how to wear what you’ve bought and, perhaps most crucially, instill the sense that the slog of sifting through everything has already been done for you. “We kept asking ourselves,” says Hood, “‘Why isn’t there a very curated shopping platform out there, one that’s focused on the product, that’s beautifully designed—and not in black and white—and without the endless scroll?”

I don’t know about you, but I am all for that. With the proliferation of designers, seasons, brands, fashion weeks—deep breath—social media outlets, experiential retail spaces, more digital options to shop—another deep breath—resale sites, and trends (micro or otherwise), fashion can require a degree of dedication and concentration that would get most of us through a PhD program. Meanwhile, there’s you and me just trying to get dressed every morning.

Like all the best ventures, it was borne out of personal experience. The duo met at British Vogue: Chambers had been the magazine’s Fashion Director for 25 years, brilliantly adept at using clothes to create memorable images that spoke far more to inner creative narratives than a mere retelling of seasonal directions. Hood, meanwhile, had decamped to London to be the publication’s Executive Fashion Editor after a stint at (full disclosure!) American Vogue in New York. At first glance, their own styles are not at all alike, with Serena putting herself together to a level of glossiness that would look unruffled even coming off of a transatlantic flight, while Lucinda opts for the kind of eclectic and colorful layering that befits one of the trio of women behind the terrific new label Colville.

Yet despite the differences, their approach to the conundrum of buying well—and buying right—is the same. “We shop very similarly, very carefully,” says Chambers. “We don’t buy massive amounts of things…. [Collagerie] is like shopping with a trusted friend who has seen it all. When my friend Fiona [Golfar, a writer] is in the middle of H&M, she will think, ‘What would Lucinda buy?’” Collagerie was started with the belief that there are a lot of Fionas—and Lucindas and Serenas—out there. “We’re not so weird and wonderful,” Chambers continues. “We have just as much anxiety about choice. You can have have six tabs open [when you’re shopping online], going from buying a sandal to a lampshade.”

Collagerie, incidentally, aspires to show you both—but not too much of either. The launch will, says Hood, feature stories around holiday season party dressing, sustainability, and “a gallery of New York style, very much inspired by my American Vogue days.” A recent version of Collagerie’s homepage is revealing because of the tight edit—the very opposite of an onslaught of stuff. There was a Celine fall 2019 runway look, a burnished chestnut-brown leather bag, a vintage chair of Danish origin, a vase decorated with a Picasso-esque line drawing of a face, and a chunky strapped sneaker platform, like something the Spice Girls would have worn if Rei Kawakubo had been dressing them.

What makes this selection interesting is that a) it looks highly personal, with aesthetic choices driven by emotion rather than material acquisition, and b) everything is presented with equanimity. It’s style first, provenance second. “There’s this misconception that good things have to be expensive,” says Hood. “The things we love… don’t have to cost a lot. It’s about something that lasts—every time you take it out of your closet, you love it as much as when you first wore it.” For Chambers, Collagerie has to stand for conscious shopping. “I put as much effort and pleasure and thought into buying a dress from Zara as I do from JW Anderson,” she says. “I wouldn’t buy more just because it’s less expensive.”

Going forward, Collagerie’s emphasis on the emotional relationship to what we buy will be able to be experienced in real life and in real time, not just on the digital plane. Chambers and Hood are gearing up to do presentations at someone’s home, their office, their hotel—wherever, really—using a modernist graphic screen designed by the interior designer Fran Hickman as a backdrop, along with a mannequin they’ve dubbed “Stella” (likely in honor of Tennant, not Maxwell). That’s if there’s anything left to buy. “We’re already shopping from Collagerie,” Hood says. “There’s nothing we don’t want.” Chambers adds, with a laugh: “It’s rather dangerous, actually.”

Originally Appeared on Vogue