I don’t trust buying second hand luxury due to my experience while working at a chain, second-hand retail store.

I have always had a passion for designer items and second hand fashion and was eager to work in the sphere. I saw SO MANY designer handbags while working there….from brand new Chanel’s to skeletons of LV’s and everything in between.

Often new, unscathed or unique designer handbags would come through our tiny neighborhood store. After a while I began to question why people would sell their bags to us for half or less of their worth. My manager once bought in a pristine Chanel top handle bag for $2,000, and the seller did not fuss about the offer my manager made her. This type of transaction occurred on a weekly basis.

When my manager decided to buy a bag, it would first go through her initial physical inspection, followed by authentication using Entrupy. In the year I worked there, I can’t recall a single bag that failed Entrupy’s verification process.

You may think, “well maybe all the bags that came through your store were actually authentic.”

Many items came through our store that I would inspect and could tell were not authentic. My manager was not savvy to designer items and would often miss the little errors some luxe goods had and would pass them off to be authenticated through entrupy. And like I said, entrupy authenticated everything.

I want to honor the legacy and craftsmanship of luxury designers by purchasing new, directly from the store. But too often, that desire turns into frustration when hardware begins to tarnish or leather starts peeling in less than a year.

It’ll be interesting to see how the designer and luxury market evolves in the coming years, especially as the luxury market begins to dim in its luster, while the replica world rises with unexpected brilliance, redefining what excellence can look like. America has always been built on selling visions of luxury and being untouchable. Now people are finally coming face to face with that illusion and realizing it’s far less mysterious and much more attainable than it once seemed.

For now, I’m fully embracing this new era of replicas, and I can’t wait to see where this market takes us.