Fanny Moizant of luxury resale site, Vestiaire Collective, gives us her tips
Fanny Moizant, co-founder of Vestiaire Collective (Photo: Moses Ng/Hong Kong Tatler)
Back in 2009, Fanny Moizant and a team of five others founded Vestiaire Collective, a platform to enable the resale of luxury products online.
The site now has over 6 million active users and its global curation teams in Paris and New York screen 30,000 items a week and upload 3,500 new items to the site daily—some at as much as 70% discount on their original price.
We caught up with Moizant during her trip to Hong Kong to launch the platform, and asked her how to tell whether a handbag is the real deal.
1. Do your research
You need to know what you're buying—whether that bag exists in that colour, that shape, that dimension. In terms of the bag itself, start with the box and the dust bag. Check them from A-Z, because nowadays, counterfeiters make these accessories too. Then, look at the global aspect of the bag—are the dimensions right? Does it hold its shape?
2. Touch and smell it
Moizant testing out the goods (Photo: Moses Ng/Hong Kong Tatler)
A good tip to tell if it's real leather is to close your eyes and hold the bag. By touching it and smelling it, your senses and fingers will tell you if it’s a real leather piece. If it’s a fake, it may well smell of plastic and glue.
3. Check the hardware
The hardware is really important—check that it's heavy and well-made. It has to be consistent in terms of colour and you don’t want to see joins. Pay attention to the sewing and how it's been put together. There should be no messy lines.
4. Analyse the logo
It may sound obvious, but it's worth closely analysing the logo. Sometimes, counterfeiters make tiny mistakes with the typeface, letter sizing and shape that are a giveaway.
5. Authentication
Every single brand has something special on a product to identify it—whether it's a code or a hologram. They change all the time so our authentication experts at Vestiare Collective have to keep up-to-date on the latest formats and guidelines in order to decipher them.
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