The Handbag You Never Gave Away Is Having Its Moment

Fashionphile has put a number on what every well-kept closet in Palm Beach already suspected: the secondhand crowd wants the old stuff. The resale house's latest report shows searches for vintage pieces more than doubling, up 112 percent, and the archival handbag is the clear beneficiary, climbing in value as it climbs in demand. Among the houses shoppers typed in most, Chanel came out on top. The jewelry findings tell a subtler story. Buyers there are no longer hunting for a recognizable name stamped on the piece and are instead judging what they see on its own merits. Taken together, it is a portrait of a luxury customer who would rather have the real thing from a particular year than the newest thing from this one. For anyone who has been quietly keeping a quilted flap bag in its dust cover since the nineties, consider this your vindication.

With reporting from WWD.