Affordable Luxury at TheRealReal: Resale Gains Value

A new report from luxury consignment site TheRealReal shows that more shoppers are turning to luxury retail.  I know from first hand experience that this is true.  I have been both consigning and buying on TheRealReal the last 2 months. My experience as a consignor has been excellent.  I booked an appointment and a representation came to my house and carefully took my items.  I had decided to sell many of my vintage winter clothes since I am no longer traveling for work as much in the winter.  Some of the designers I have consigned to TheRealReal and successfully sold include Chanel, Roland Mouret and Tadashi Shoji.  I’ve been so please with the website customer service and prompt payments that I recently consigned a few more items.

Why sell and buy from TheRealReal? For starters, their designer goods are inspected and authenticated–so you are not buying cheap fakes.  They sell top luxury designers like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Valentino and Ferragamo.  One thing I like, in addition to the quality of the items, is the selection of British designers like Emilia Wickstead, Roland Mouret and Roskanda. Buying these designers second hand on TheRealReal saves tariff prices as well as the retail prices.

Luxury Designers being resold on TheRealReal website include Prada, Celine and Saint Laurent.

According to their own research, based on  15 years of proprietary data the site enjoys high traffic which comes from a strong community of shoppers. To be precise, more than 50 million items  have been sold and a community of 44 million members enjoy shopping and browsing The RealReal.

Key Findings from The RealReal 2026 Resale Report
* Vintage is surging: Demand for vintage on The RealReal is up 432% since 2020, while decade-specific saved searches rose 135% Y/Y. Searches for 2000s fashion jumped 93%.
* Nostalgia is getting hyper-specific: Saved searches surged 650% for “Phoebe Philo Celine,” 400% for “Nicolas Ghesquière Balenciaga” and 375% for “Marc Jacobs Louis Vuitton.”
* Luxury is local: Minneapolis buys and sells nearly 9x the national average of Thom Browne; Dallas buys 2.5x more David Yurman jewelry; and demand for Montblanc in Tampa/St. Pete more than tripled.
* The data spots acceleration early: Saved searches jumped 136% for Alaïa, 96% for Miu Miu and 88% for Loewe, while searches for Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy skyrocketed 10,967%.
* Secondhand is becoming the first choice: 93% of Americans shop online for secondhand items. (Source: Capital One Shopping Report, March 2026)

If you’re looking for luxury for less, do check out TheRealReal on the web, or have a look at their brick and mortar stores in Palo Alto and Beverly Hills, California.