Avant Regard — Fashion Community, Archive & Resale
August 25, 2026
Overview
Avant Regard is an independent avant-garde fashion product: a community for outfits and discussion, a designer and runway archive, a global map of archive boutiques, and a C2C marketplace for authenticated archive pieces. It ships as an iOS and Android app and as a full web product, both on the same FastAPI backend.The archive catalogs 200+ designers and 9,000+ runway collections. Collectors and boutiques can list pieces, negotiate, and complete orders; each person also keeps a personal collection ledger that can become a digital passport and be relisted in one tap.
What each part is for
Discover / forum: Outfits, reviews, and everyday posts, with follows, comments, and direct messages.
Archive: Designer brands and runway records — the product documents 200+ designers and 9,000+ shows.
Boutiques / Atlas: A directory and interactive map of independent archive boutiques worldwide.
Marketplace: Collectors and boutiques list archive pieces, make offers, and place orders.
Personal Archive: A private ledger of owned pieces, with a digital passport and one-tap relist.
Merchants: Boutique onboarding, catalog, categories, and a store dashboard.
Plus / levels: A subscription that lowers commission and unlocks archive analytics, plus creator titles and ranks.
Key Features
Three clients, one API: React Native (Expo) for iOS and Android, Next.js 14 for web, and FastAPI with PostgreSQL/Supabase for the API. The web product grew from a landing page into Discover, Archive, Marketplace, Atlas, a merchant dashboard, and an admin console, all on the same REST API as the app.
Dual-region release: Separate CN and NA app variants, bilingual EN/ZH, Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, and Stripe (including Connect and Identity) overseas. iOS builds ship through EAS to the App Store.
C2C marketplace: Listings, offers, escrow-style orders, wallet and ledger settlement, KYC, payouts, after-sales disputes, and paid expert authentication reports that attach to a listing.
Digital passport: A personal piece ledger with ownership matching and one-tap relist. AI generates front, side, and back views from a single photo. Archive pieces can take likes and comments without entering the Discover feed.
Monorepo scale: Expo, Next.js App Router, and FastAPI/Postgres in one repo — about 100 mobile screens, about 90 web routes, and 100+ database migrations covering feed, chat, merchant operations, and admin moderation.
App and web do not keep separate data models. Both call one REST API, so a listing, passport, boutique pin, or forum thread is the same record on every client. That is what let the site expand from a marketing page into the full product without a second backend.
Region split without a second product
China and North America are variants of the same app: language, store listing, and payment provider change, the product does not. China uses Alipay and WeChat Pay. Overseas checkout uses Stripe, with Connect for seller payouts and Identity for KYC.
Marketplace as a ledger
A sale is not a single checkout call. Listing, offer, order, wallet entries, payout, dispute, and the optional authentication report are separate states on one piece. The personal archive is the source of ownership: a piece is filed once, then relisted into the marketplace instead of being re-entered.
Feed isolation
Archive pieces participate in likes and comments, but those interactions stay off the Discover feed. Community posts and catalog records share engagement primitives without mixing the two timelines.
Outcome
Avant Regard is a shipped independent product: iOS and Android through EAS, and a public web app at avantregard.com. The monorepo covers the community, the archive, the boutique map, merchant and admin tools, and the resale loop — from a photo and a passport through offer, escrow, authentication, and payout.
