Summary: British stylist Bay Garnett—co-founder of Oxfam's "Secondhand September" campaign—launched a limited-edition collaboration with London brand Rixo in 2026, with designs drawn directly from her secondhand archive and pieces priced between €275 and €595. She says she now rarely buys new, and predicts the fashion industry's "constant newness" model will eventually change under pressure from water scarcity and climate change.

Key Points

  • Garnett is a co-founder of Oxfam's "Secondhand September" campaign and has long been seen as a pioneer of pre-loved dressing.
  • Her limited-edition collaboration with Rixo launched in 2026, priced at €275–595.
  • She rarely buys new now, occasionally picking up fine cashmere turtlenecks, and hunts secondhand on platforms like Vinted and Etsy.

British stylist Bay Garnett, co-founder of Oxfam's "Secondhand September" campaign, has released a limited-edition collection with London brand Rixo, with individual pieces priced from €275 to €595, spanning wool-blend coats, faux fur, printed skirts and checked jackets. Rixo co-founder and creative director Orlagh McCloskey says Garnett is "unapologetically herself" and has a genuine love for "unique, found, deeply personal pieces."

The collaboration's inspiration comes from her secondhand collection. The muses Garnett cites include the gothic romance embodied by Napoleonic jackets, poet Anita Pallenberg's turtleneck-with-leopard-print look, Charlotte Tilbury-style 1930s corseted dressing, and the Eastern-inflected tops worn by Tina Chow during New York's Studio 54 era. She says her inspiration rarely comes from runway trends, but rather from thrift stores, films and books.

On the industry itself, her criticism is fairly direct. Garnett says she is "not a fashion fan" because she doesn't follow trends: "A lot of fashion is just about selling clothes." She admires John Galliano's 1990s collections because he drew from and reassembled different reference points—Marie Antoinette, the Belle Époque—rather than repeating existing styles. In her view, the information overload of the Instagram era is devaluing both work and voice at the same time: "Everyone's constantly dropping albums," making creative work harder to see.

She has also watched the secondhand market change. She notes that finding brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Ralph Lauren or Ungaro at extremely low prices is now "not impossible, but genuinely rare"; several of her favorite charity thrift stores in New York have closed, a result of the resale market's over-expansion. She herself occasionally shops on Vinted and Etsy. Her proudest find is a banana-print top—the one Kate Moss wore in a shoot for British Vogue—bought for $5 at a now-closed Cancer Care thrift store in New York.

Her everyday consumption matches this. Garnett says she now buys new very rarely, and her wardrobe isn't large, since moving and decluttering shed a lot of it; what she does occasionally pick up are good-quality cashmere turtlenecks and understated old pieces she loves, like 1970s camouflage shirts. She thinks a good belt does the most to elevate a look, and her go-to for autumn/winter is a 1960s mod-style leopard-print biker jacket she bought last year at Portobello Market. Asked whose wardrobe she'd like to raid, she names Elvis Presley's 1950s closet, Joan Crawford's and Marie Antoinette's, and, among contemporaries, Chloë Sevigny's.

Her read on the industry's future carries a sense of urgency. Garnett argues the "constant newness" model isn't a matter of moral lecturing but of inevitability—she isn't sure it will become one season a year, but she is certain the current production pace can't continue, because water will become increasingly scarce, climate change is moving fast, and "there will inevitably be legislation." She also thinks this could force designers to become extremely restrained and creative. Coming from a stylist whose career path centers on old clothes, the implication for the secondhand trade and resale retailers is this: reduced new-production upstream and shifts in the structure of secondhand supply could rewrite both sourcing and pricing across the industry within the next few years.

Source: Stylist Bay Garnett On Pioneering Pre-Loved, Dressing Chloë Sevigny And Why Movies Are The Best Source Of Inspiration - The Gloss Magazine · Originally published 2026-09-30