From Miles Socha | WWD, May 4, 2021

Is it any coincidence that the youngest of the top-four handbag brands on resale site The RealReal — Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel and Gucci — is 100 years old?

“We primarily see heritage drive demand in our core, high-value categories including luxury handbags, fine jewelry and watches,” said Sasha Shoka, head of women’s at The RealReal. “Resale value for these marquee handbags is up 30 percent year-over-year.” Spurred on partly by the pandemic, many European brands have been leaning into heritage in a variety of ways, with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing resurrecting archival monograms and launching a podcast series about the house, founded in 1945, and Carine Roitfeld, style adviser at the Karl Lagerfeld brand, creating a Karl x Karl capsule for fall 2021 inspired directly by the late founder’s personal mode of dress.

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