For this week’s Luxury Briefing, I spoke to Noelle Sciacca, The RealReal’s associate director of fashion merchandising and content strategy, about how the resale market is accurately predicting which items designer brands will bring back next based on resale demand, as well as other interesting findings from the new The RealReal 2026 Resale Report, released on Tuesday. Also, executive moves at the British Fashion Council, Macy’s, LVMH and FIT, and a final decision on the Meta trial. For tips or comments, email me at zofia@glossy.co.
Luxury brands have long mined their archives for ideas. Now, resale shoppers are providing an increasingly visible signal of which products and creative eras are ready to return.
The RealReal’s 2026 Resale Report, released on August 25, is based on activity among its more than 44 million members and shows shoppers following individual designers across houses. That behavior is particularly pronounced around Phoebe Philo. Her return to fashion with an eponymous label in 2023 has renewed interest in the aesthetic she developed during her earlier tenures at Chloé and Celine, while putting those older pieces within reach of shoppers priced out of her current collection. Searches containing “Phoebe Philo,” “Phoebe Philo Chloé” or “Chloé Phoebe Philo” increased 176% between August 2023 and July 2026. Over the same period, average sale prices for Philo-era Chloé clothing rose 57%.
The clearest example is the Paddington, introduced during Philo’s tenure at Chloé. The original bag now sells for an average of $1,290 on The RealReal, compared to $275 three years ago. Chloé brought back an updated version for the bag’s 20th anniversary in 2025.
“People love the aesthetic, and Phoebe Philo’s own collection is probably out of a lot of people’s price range,” said Noelle Sciacca, The RealReal’s associate director of fashion merchandising and content strategy. Philo’s Small Gig bag, for example, currently costs $3,200. “They’re looking back at where she was,” Sciacca said, adding that rising demand has prompted The RealReal to increase prices for some Philo-era Chloé pieces.
The effect extends across fashion’s creative-director reshuffle. Searches for Matthieu Blazy increased 10,967% year over year following his move from Bottega Veneta to Chanel. Searches for Sarah Burton increased 243% after she left Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, while Jonathan Anderson searches rose 158% when he started at Dior.
“There are brand loyalists, but there are definitely creative-vision loyalists who follow people from house to house,” Sciacca said. “We see search immediately increase for the brand or the period of time that creative director was at a brand.” A fan of Alessandro Michele’s aesthetic, for example, may search for Gucci pieces along with his tenure years rather than simply browsing by brand.
The pattern is not just confined to The RealReal. Fashionphile’s 2025 Ultra-Luxury Resale Report found that sales of Balenciaga’s Le City bag, designed by Nicolas Ghesquière in 2001 and later revived during Demna’s tenure, rose 525% year over year as Demna left the house for Gucci. Following Jonathan Anderson’s move from Loewe to Dior, searches for Loewe’s Puzzle bag increased 13.3%, which was introduced under Anderson. And after Michael Rider reintroduced Phoebe Philo’s Phantom bag in his debut Celine collection, searches for the bag surged 576.4%.
Creative-director changes are only one catalyst in this archive feedback loop. Fashionphile recorded a 231.5% increase in follows for the Balenciaga City bag as Demna prepared to leave the house — a “follow” allows a shopper to track a style and receive an alert when another example becomes available. Follows for Alexander McQueen rose 32.4%, reflecting renewed interest in the late designer’s romantic, punk-inflected aesthetic even as the house entered a new creative chapter under Seán McGirr. And, following Blazy’s latest Chanel collection, The RealReal saw immediate interest in older Chanel ballet flats, handbags and the Surf tote, introduced by Karl Lagerfeld in 2002. Meanwhile, in 2025, Louis Vuitton’s reissued collaboration with Takashi Murakami, originally developed during Marc Jacobs’s tenure, resulted in a 1,119% spike in resale searches for the duo’s collaborative pieces.
Together, the figures suggest that a new appointment or reissue does not simply generate interest in what comes next. It can send shoppers back through a house’s creative history, where the resale market offers immediate access to the original designs.
“They’re finding the original version of this new version that’s being put out there,” Sciacca said. “We can almost see before the brand itself whether that new creative direction is resonating with people.”
Resale activity can also reveal when a former “it” item is re-entering the fashion conversation. For example, The RealReal confirmed that brands can request access to its demand data free of charge, giving them a view into the designers, products and archival styles gaining traction on the platform.
When Bottega Veneta introduced its curved-handle Sardine bag, The RealReal noticed renewed interest in Saint Laurent’s similarly shaped Mombasa bag. The platform raised resale prices for the Saint Laurent bag as demand grew. Saint Laurent subsequently reintroduced the Tom Ford-era bag for Spring 2026.
The return of indie-sleaze aesthetics has similarly pushed shoppers back toward the Alexander McQueen skull scarf. Its average sale price has increased 25% in the last year and 13% over three years, coinciding with the motif’s return to McQueen main line collections.
“A savvy brand is definitely paying attention to what is happening within the resale market because it gives people an inventory of product that goes beyond a season,” Sciacca said.
However, the data establishes chronology rather than direct causation. Chloé, Saint Laurent and McQueen did not respond to requests for comment on whether resale demand informed their decisions to revisit the Paddington, Mombasa and skull scarf.
The report also points to a broader move away from shopping by logo alone – shoppers are also looking for garments with high percentages of quality fabrics, like cotton, silk and cashmere. Searches on The RealReal for cotton increased 46% year over year, representing the largest increase among the materials examined by The RealReal. Leather, silk, cashmere and wool were also among its most-searched materials.
“You can buy a synthetic sweater from a retailer like Zara, and that sweater is more expensive than 100% cashmere on the secondhand market,” Sciacca said. “You think, ‘What am I doing here?’” At current prices on the TRR website, a Theory cashmere crewneck in good condition is listed for $55, compared with $109 for a 100% cashmere crewneck at Uniqlo and $162 for a similar style at Zara.
Customers are also becoming more willing to accept visible wear if an item is from a designer brand or from good materials. Year over year, The RealReal’s GMV from products in fair condition increased 27%, while GMV from the more heavily worn “As Is” category increased 53%.
Sciacca said Gen Z and younger millennials are driving the shift, sometimes buying a worn bag or pair of shoes and paying a tailor or cobbler to restore it. “You realize, ‘I can actually get this bag for a very affordable price and then work with a local tailor or somebody who specializes in [restoring] it,’” she said. “It would still be less expensive than buying the bag in pristine and perfect condition.” In response, The RealReal has expanded the range of conditions it accepts over the past three to four years — it introduced the “As Is” category in 2025.
“When the secondhand market was fairly new, people really wanted things that looked new,” Sciacca said. “As more and more people widely accept secondhand, we tested whether people would take a bag where the lining has a small tear or if it is missing one of the feet. The answer is yes.”
Executive moves
- David Pemsel will exit the British Fashion Council as chair on September 30, with his successor set to be announced in September.
- Macy’s appointed Maya Dukes senior vice president and executive creative director, overseeing its creative strategy and brand expression.
- LVMH appointed Alexandre Oulès chief operating officer of its beauty division, overseeing manufacturing, supply chain and purchasing.
- Designer Brandon Blackwood joined New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly established Business Advisory Council.
- FIT appointed former WME Fashion CMO Kimberly Fasting-Berg as its first chief marketing officer.
News to know
- Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion over 10 years to settle claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children, without admitting wrongdoing. It will introduce default two-hour usage limits, muted notifications and hidden likes for teenage users.
- Dolce & Gabbana is seeking to raise cash through property sales and other transactions after lenders waived its debt terms through March 2028, following a 2% decline in annual revenue to approximately $2.17 billion, an EBITDA loss of more than $116 million and a rise in net debt to approximately $542 million.
- British brand Chopova Lowena will open its first permanent store and headquarters in East London, combining made-to-order kilts and one-off pieces with lower-priced exclusive merchandise as the label builds its direct-to-consumer business while remaining intentionally niche.
Listen in
On this week’s Glossy Podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international fashion reporter Zofia Zwieglinska unpack Frasers Group’s Harvey Nichols acquisition, Mike Ashley’s growing influence across fashion and what the deal could mean for British luxury. Listen here.
Read on Glossy
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