RISE OF THE RESALE RAIL

The sites that help you cash in on your designer cats-offs

When it comes to shopping for new clothes there are a few rules I attempt to abide by to keep both my overcrowded wardrobe and overused credit card in check: does the item I am on the brink of buying – shirt, skirt, sweater, whatever – go with any clothes I currently own? Do I love it, need it, want it so much that I would choose to wear it tomorrow over anything else in my closet? And does it actually fit me, or only the version of me who is, say, three pounds slimmer? (As we all know, there are some shopping slip-ups that even Spanx can’t solve.)

In the past year or so, though, a new consideration has come into play: what will the item be worth if, having broken my own rules, it turns out I never wear it or I have failed to shrink myself into it and want to sell it on? Resale value is the new buzz-phrase among savvy fashion-lovers who no longer simply shop for clothes and accessories but trade in them, always considering the preloved (second hand to you and me) value before they buy anything new. It is part financial brilliance, boosting your ability to buy what you want in the future, part get- out- of-jail-free card for the ill-thought-through purchases of your past. As such, the business of selling preloved fashion is booming.

Auction houses have been doing it for a while, with smaller ones such as Kerry Taylor and Chiswick Auctions regularly whipping up interest for both vintage and designer clothing sales. But it is specialist fashion websites that are now attracting huge volumes of customers – both those wanting to sell things on and those looking for bargains as buyers. The Paris-based Vestiaire Collective has more than five million users in 47 countries and its site is bursting with once loved clothes looking for new homes. Five thousand items a day are uploaded to the site, from £40 Zara bomber jackets to Hermès Birkin bags costing

Pieces from Kenzo x H&M are selling for more online than they cost in store