There was a time when buying pre-owned designer goods in South Africa involved a fair amount of detective work. Ten years ago, if you wanted a Louis Vuitton, Gucci or Chanel item, you might have found it on a site like Gumtree and hoped the photographs told the whole story. Was it real? Where had it come from? Why was it being sold? And, perhaps most importantly, could you trust the person selling it?
The questions people ask now are rather different. Which one? In which colour? From which year?
Few people have had a better view of this strong South African shift from second-hand to pre-owned than Michael Zahariev, co-founder of Luxity, which is marking its tenth year in business. A decade of sales records offers an unusually useful picture of what South Africans wanted to wear, what fell out of favour with shoppers, what came back around and what became collectable.
The handbag is sharing the wardrobe
Ten years ago, bags dominated the resale wardrobe. Two out of every three pieces changing hands were handbags, and most of the rest were shoes. Today, it is closer to one in five.
Bags have not gone anywhere, and they have never been worth more. The average pre-owned bag now goes for R28,238, up from R12,599. As the price of a classic designer handbag has risen from 50% to 70% since 2019, pre-owned has become a more practical way into the category.
What has also changed is how comfortable people have become buying pre-owned. As that confidence has grown, so has the range of things they are prepared to consider. Shoes went from one in ten purchases to nearly one in three. Watches, which Luxity did not offer at all in 2017, now go for an average of R49,999. Apparel arrived in 2021. And this year, someone even bought homeware.
"The resale customer has become much more fashion-literate," says Zahariev. "They know the brands, the collections and, increasingly, what they're hunting for."
2016 was very Gucci
Alessandro Michele had taken the house over as creative director in 2015 and turned maximalism, clashing prints, logos and vintage references into the look of the moment. The Dionysus was everywhere.
That is now showing up in resale. One in seven pieces walking out the door in 2017 was Gucci. Today it is one in five. Louis Vuitton has gone the other way, from more than four in every ten pieces to just over two. Michele left, Gucci changed direction, and that particular version of the house became something to hunt for rather than something to buy new.
Yesterday's trend can become tomorrow's archive.
And Gucci is not the only example. Dolce & Gabbana has grown from 0.9% of items sold to 5.2%, while Versace has risen from 0.4% to 2.8%. Montblanc, which does not appear in the early mix, now accounts for 2.9%. Chanel and Hermès have lost share by volume but still sell more individual pieces than they did in 2017.
The musical chairs decade
The decade itself has been unusually eventful for the fashion houses. In 2018, Hedi Slimane took over Celine from Phoebe Philo, Virgil Abloh arrived at Louis Vuitton menswear, Kim Jones moved to Dior, and Riccardo Tisci went to Burberry. Then came 2025, when the musical chairs accelerated. Jonathan Anderson took both menswear and womenswear at Dior, Matthieu Blazy moved to Chanel, Demna took over Gucci, Donatella Versace stepped down after three decades, and a wave of new designer debuts followed. Every designer exit changes what becomes desirable on the resale market.
"The interesting thing about resale is that you get to watch the fashion cycle play out in real time," notes Zahariev. "A brand can cool off, a particular style can suddenly become desirable again, and a piece that sat untouched for years can become the one everyone wants."
What people watched, they wanted
Fashion rarely happens on the runway alone. A character wears something on television and suddenly everyone wants to know where it came from. A film sends people back into a designer's archive. A celebrity wears a particular piece often enough and it stops being just a piece of clothing and becomes part of the cultural conversation.
What's your hot take on this story?
When Succession mocked a Burberry tote as "ludicrously capacious" in 2023, searches for the bag rose 310% in the weeks that followed. House of Gucci sent viewers back to the Italian house's older collections in 2021, while Emily in Paris has spent years putting French luxury in front of a global audience.
South Africa has had its own run of moments. Tyla's red-carpet wardrobe has become a global fashion story in its own right. She made her Met Gala debut in 2024 in a Balmain gown sculpted from sand, returned in 2025 in custom Jacquemus, and walked the steps again in 2026 in custom Valentino, designed by Alessandro Michele. The man who defined Gucci in 2016 is now dressing South Africa's biggest pop export.
Amapiano came out of the townships of Johannesburg and Pretoria and brought its own dress code with it. Built in parking-lot sessions and club sets rather than on a runway, its artists mix local labels like Rich Mnisi and Galxboy with Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Amiri.
Screen culture has had its own decade too. Netflix South Africa turned ten this year, and Luxity pieces and stores have appeared in local productions including Bad Influencer.
Then there is the wardrobe you scroll past every day. A decade ago, the people who decided what was worth owning were magazine editors and the houses themselves. Now it is influencers, and the standard they set is relentless. Resale is how a lot of people meet it, and much of the content driving that is explicitly about buying pre-owned rather than new.
Suspicion took a decade to shake
For years, buying pre-owned meant doing it from the couch. Everything happened online, partly because there was nowhere else to do it and partly because nobody wanted to be seen doing it.
Then the shops opened, and it turned out people wanted to touch things. By 2023, the floors were doing nearly four times the business of the website. South Africans wanted to hold the bag, check the stitching and decide for themselves.
Now the pendulum has swung again. Online is up 75.3% on this time last year, and a customer who once wanted to see a piece in person will buy a watch from a phone.
"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."
Once customers trust the market, they are also willing to wait for the right piece.
In 2025, a Hermès Birkin made for Jane Birkin herself sold at Sotheby's Paris for €8.6 million, becoming the most expensive handbag ever sold at auction. Closer to home, Luxity sold a Hermès Togo Birkin for R220,000 within two minutes of listing it in 2021. Today they have many Birkins listed over 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 next ten years
Zahariev expects at least one in ten luxury items bought in Africa to be pre-owned by 2027.
“The customer knows what they want now,” he shares. “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.”
He is not alone in thinking so. Half of luxury shoppers worldwide now check the pre-owned market before buying anything new, and pre-owned luxury grew last year while sales of new luxury goods fell.
