Condé Nast bets on creator commerce with “Vette”

Condé Nast is making a decisive push into the creator economy with Vette, a platform for influencer-run storefronts launching in early 2026. The concept, according to Vogue Business, gives editors, influencers and other tastemakers the tools to run their own e-commerce boutiques without inventory or operations teams. Brands drop-ship, Vette processes checkout, and creators curate a seamless alternative to clunky affiliate links.

Lisa Aiken, Condé Nast’s SVP of commerce and Vogue’s executive fashion director, calls affiliate “high friction”. Having held senior buying roles at Net-a-Porter and Neiman Marcus, she sees Vette as “a new route to market” at a time when wholesale is squeezed and DTC costs soar. Condé Nast’s commerce revenues have already grown about 200 per cent in five years.

Vette’s launch reflects a wider shift. Algorithms dominate discovery, pushing creators to own their audiences through newsletters and platforms such as Substack. Fashion newsletters on Substack have doubled in number and subscriptions over the past year, generating over 10m dollars annually in paid revenue, while the broader creator economy is forecast to surpass 200bn dollars globally with 23 per cent CAGR through 2033 (Grand View Research).

For fashion brands under margin pressure, Vette could be a lifeline: AI-driven merchandising tools, built-in inventory feeds and marketing dashboards promise to make small creator teams commercially viable. Yet questions remain over revenue splits and discoverability. As Aiken puts it, she wants Vette to be “a win-win-win” for brands, creators and consumers.

From a critic’s eye, the platform is a bold pivot from content to commerce. Whether Vette becomes the benchmark for creator-led retail, or just another storefront experiment, will depend on execution. But in an era where “people shop from people”, Condé Nast is betting that taste plus trust equals transactions.