To be a stylish New Yorker is to have a preferred local dry cleaner, and on Saturday night, a storefront on Canal Street became just that for NYFW show-goers. Elizabeth von der Goltz, Poshmark’s Chief Revenue Officer, hosted a downtown preview of the platform’s now-open-to-the-public activation, which also marks the launch of the Try Yourself On national brand campaign.
Upon arrival, guests were welcomed into a replica of a classic dry cleaner—complete with a working garment conveyor. Out back, a speakeasy-style cocktail lounge and showroom awaited. The idea for the set-up, which echoes the campaign imagery, came from people’s tendency to bring only their most rare and treasured items to be professionally cleaned.
In this spirit, ambassadors from the new Tastemakers campaign—think: Chloe Fineman, Courtney Grow, Colleen Allen, Jalil Johnson, Elissa Santisi and her daughter Francesca Keller—had lent pieces from their personal wardrobes to create a special NYFW collection. (You can also now follow them and shop their pre-loved pieces in the app.) Crowd favorites included a pair of feather-trimmed Prada mules, a beaded Phoebe Philo-era Chloé bag, and a Roberto Cavalli Spring 2003 mini dress that was—much to everyone’s disappointment—not for sale.
The Tastemaker campaign, the first major project by Poshmark’s new Creative and Fashion Director Jamie Hunter, was shot at the beloved fourth-generation uptown cleaner Jeeves. As part of the rollout, Poshmark will also soon bestow “tastemaker” badges to select users, offering enhanced shopping features on their inventory and encouraging them to curate custom collections on the platform.
The campaign, von der Goltz told Vogue, is designed to allow shoppers to dabble in different forms of self-expression, perhaps at different points throughout their lives. “We really want people to play with it and try on different things, like versions of themselves,” she said. With the tastemaker curation feature, “you go from closet to closet and into these different worlds.”
Poshmark also has plans to harness New York City’s burgeoning appetite for celebrity closet sales by launching their first in-person closet sale with Saturday Night Live alum Fineman in December—which, the comedian confirmed, will include pieces recovered while cleaning out her SNL dressing room after announcing her departure from the show in July.
“I think nothing’s more New York than a closet sale,” Fineman told Vogue. “I think it’s really fun doing these kinds of things in New York, because I feel like we have such a specific point of view with style… People dress in New York, like our clothes are our car.” Pausing for a moment, she wryly added: “A celebrity closet sale is New York’s version of an Erewhon smoothie collab.”
After enjoying margaritas and passed bites of tuna tartare and olive oil cake, guests were treated to a complimentary vintage men’s dress shirt from the conveyor on the way out—heading into the night carrying plastic garment bags down the city street, like they had all just finished running a very glamorous errand.
