A decade ago, buying a pre-owned Louis Vuitton, Gucci or Chanel item in South Africa could feel like a transaction that required as much detective work as fashion knowledge. Today, the questions have changed.
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Instead of simply asking whether a designer item is authentic, consumers are increasingly asking which model, colour, collection or year they should buy.
That shift offers a revealing window into how South Africans' attitudes towards luxury and resale have evolved.
For Michael Zahariev, co-founder of Luxity, which is marking its tenth year in business, a decade of sales data shows how consumer tastes have broadened, how fashion cycles influence resale demand and how pre-owned luxury has moved closer to the mainstream.
The change is visible in what consumers buy.
From handbag market to broader luxury wardrobe
Handbags once dominated Luxity's resale business. Ten years ago, two out of every three pieces changing hands were handbags, with shoes accounting for much of the remainder.
Today, handbags represent closer to one in five purchases.
That does not mean demand for designer bags has weakened. The average pre-owned handbag now sells for R28,238, compared with R12,599 previously. At the same time, rising prices for new luxury goods have made the resale market a more accessible entry point into designer brands.
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As consumers have become more comfortable with authenticated pre-owned goods, the categories they are prepared to buy have expanded.
Shoes have grown from around one in 10 purchases to nearly one in three. Watches, which Luxity did not offer in 2017, now sell for an average of R49,999, while apparel was introduced in 2021. The business has also made its first move into homeware this year.
“The resale customer has become much more fashion-literate,” says Zahariev. “They know the brands, the collections and, increasingly, what they're hunting for.”
Luxity's current proposition spans handbags, shoes, clothing, watches, jewellery and accessories, with authentication positioned as a central part of the buying experience.
When yesterday's trend becomes tomorrow's archive
The changing mix of brands also illustrates how creative direction and fashion cycles can influence the resale market.
Gucci, for example, has increased its share of Luxity's sales from one in seven pieces in 2017 to around one in five today. Louis Vuitton, by contrast, has declined from more than four in every 10 pieces to just over two.
The shift coincides with major changes in the fashion industry, including Alessandro Michele's tenure at Gucci, which began in 2015 and helped establish a maximalist aesthetic built around bold prints, logos and vintage references.
For resale shoppers, however, a period that has passed out of mainstream fashion can become precisely what makes an item desirable.
“Yesterday's trend can become tomorrow's archive,” says Zahariev.
Other brands have also increased their share of Luxity's sales. Dolce & Gabbana has grown from 0.9% of items sold to 5.2%, while Versace has increased from 0.4% to 2.8%. Montblanc, which was absent from the early sales mix, now accounts for 2.9%.
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Chanel and Hermès have lost share by volume but still sell more individual pieces than they did in 2017.
Fashion is increasingly shaped outside the runway
The resale market also provides a record of how popular culture influences consumer demand.
Television, film, celebrity dressing and social media can all turn an item into a cultural reference point – and potentially a resale opportunity.
The phenomenon is not unique to South Africa. Succession, for example, helped reignite interest in a Burberry tote after the bag featured in the series, while House of Gucci and Emily in Paris have contributed to renewed interest in designer fashion and archives.
South African pop culture has increasingly fed into the same cycle.
Tyla's international profile has made her red-carpet wardrobe part of the global fashion conversation, while amapiano has brought a distinctly South African aesthetic into the international spotlight. Artists combine local designers such as Rich Mnisi and Galxboy with global luxury labels, creating new intersections between street culture, music and high fashion.
The result is a fashion ecosystem in which consumers can discover a piece on a screen or social feed and then search for it in the resale market.
Trust has become part of the product
Perhaps the biggest change over the past decade has been the shift in consumer confidence.
Early luxury resale was heavily dependent on online transactions, at a time when buyers had limited ways of verifying what they were purchasing.
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The development of physical resale stores changed that dynamic. Luxity says its physical retail business was doing nearly four times the business of its website by 2023, suggesting that consumers still wanted the reassurance of seeing, touching and examining high-value pre-owned goods before purchasing them.
That relationship has subsequently moved back towards digital commerce.
Online sales are now up 75.3% year on year, according to the business, and customers who previously preferred physical inspection are increasingly comfortable buying high-value items online.
“You cannot argue somebody out of being suspicious,” says Zahariev. “You have to let them look. Once somebody has been in, examined everything and bought something, they'll order a R60,000 watch online without asking to see it first.”
Authentication has consequently become a core component of the resale proposition. Luxity says its process includes photographic review followed by physical inspection, while its current business operates through both online sales and boutiques in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban.
The rise of the informed luxury shopper
Greater trust is also changing how consumers shop.
Instead of treating resale as a way to find a cheaper version of something they could buy new, increasingly knowledgeable shoppers are using it to find specific pieces that may no longer be available through traditional retail.
The Hermès Birkin provides an extreme example of this collector mentality. In 2025, a Birkin made for the late Jane Birkin herself sold at Sotheby's Paris for €8.6m.
Closer to home, Luxity sold a Hermès Togo Birkin for R220,000 within two minutes of listing it in 2021. The company says it now lists several Birkins for more than R500,000.
“By the time a piece like that comes in, the customer has usually been looking for months,” says Zahariev. “They know the bag, the size, the colour or the leather they want. So when the right one appears, there can be very little hesitation.”
The behaviour points to a broader change in luxury consumption: the resale customer is becoming less focused on simply owning a recognisable brand and more focused on finding the right piece.
Resale moves closer to the luxury mainstream
That evolution is occurring against a broader global shift in the luxury industry.
Luxity's 2025 research found that South African consumers were increasingly favouring fewer, higher-value purchases, with searches for jewellery rising 43.8% and bag searches increasing 14.6%. The business reported 27.86% year-on-year growth in 2025.
Its current retail model also reflects how far the category has moved from its early online-only perception, with boutiques positioned alongside conventional luxury retail environments and an offering spanning multiple categories.
For Zahariev, the next stage is likely to be driven by consumers who already understand the value proposition of pre-owned.
He expects at least one in 10 luxury items bought in Africa to be pre-owned by 2027.
“The customer knows what they want now,” he says. “They know the brand, the collection, the colour, the year. And if you know what you're looking for, resale gives you a much bigger wardrobe to choose from.”
The significance of the past decade, then, is not simply that South Africans are buying more second-hand luxury. It is that the language around it has changed.
Pre-owned is increasingly less about settling for what someone else no longer wants and more about accessing a wider, more varied and sometimes more desirable luxury market.
In that sense, the resale industry is not sitting outside luxury retail. It is becoming another way into it.
