Luxury resale market outpaces primary market, driven by Gen Z and Millennials

The secondary market for luxury goods is growing two to three times faster than the primary market, according to the 2026 resale report by US online resale platform The RealReal (TRR), titled “The Revolution of Resale.”

TRR counted 44 million members as of the second quarter of 2026, and 93 percent of Americans now shop online for secondhand items, according to data from Capital One Thrifting cited in the report. The report also found that 47 percent of consumers evaluate an item’s potential future resale value before buying it new, citing figures from Capital One Shopping. More than half of TRR’s customer base identifies as Gen Z or Millennial, a group the company says increasingly treats pre-loved luxury as a first choice rather than a fallback.

Rati Levesque, TRR’s president and chief executive officer, said in the report that “the idea of something being ‘dated’ has become, well, dated.”

"Over 15 years and more than 50 million items sold, we've built a proprietary dataset that connects what people want with what they own, what they're selling and what those pieces are worth at any given time. Combined with our authentication expertise and technology to authenticate, price and track millions of unique items, The RealReal has an unmatched ability to understand the real market value of luxury, as well as to see where the market is going before it gets there," Levesque said.

Chanel dethrones Louis Vuitton as resale’s most-searched brand

In TRR’s annual ranking of its ten most-searched brands, Chanel took the top spot in 2026, displacing Louis Vuitton, which had led the list in both 2024 and 2025 after Gucci topped it in 2023. Prada, Gucci and Miu Miu round out the top five, with The Row, Hermès, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga completing the top ten. TRR ties Chanel’s rise directly to Matthieu Blazy, who joined the French house as creative director at the end of 2024; saved searches for his name climbed 10,967 percent year over year.

The report notes similar, if smaller, spikes tied to other recent creative-director moves: Sarah Burton, who joined Givenchy in 2024 and designed the custom suit Timothée Chalamet wore to the 2026 Oscars, saw a 243 percent search increase, while Jonathan Anderson, who became Dior’s creative director in 2025 and designed Taylor Swift’s wedding dress, saw a 158 percent rise.

Celine did not make TRR’s top ten this year, though the report highlights a spike in searches for Michael Rider by name, the designer who presented his first collection for the house in July 2025. It also flags rising interest in Grace Wales Bonner, who founded her eponymous label in 2014 and is set to show her first menswear collection for Hermès in January 2027.

Nostalgia features heavily in TRR’s saved-search data

Searches referencing Phoebe Philo’s tenure at Celine, which ran from 2008 to 2017, rose 650 percent year over year, the steepest increase in a broader “new nostalgia” trend the report links to renewed interest in 2010s-era design.

Other archival searches climbed too: Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga years were up 400 percent, Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton era rose 375 percent, 2008-era Prada gained 75 percent, and archival Acne Studios rose 33 percent. Philo appears twice in the report. Beyond the Celine-era search spike, TRR recorded a 247 percent rise in the supply of items tagged with her name, the fastest supply acceleration tied to any individual in the report, which the company attributes partly to growing interest in Philo’s own namesake label alongside her archival Celine work.

The report also tracks brands earlier in their growth curve. Searches for emerging labels Rùadh and Heirlome rose 361 percent and 289 percent respectively, outpacing new supply by 36 times and 1.73 times, a gap TRR frames as a signal of brands headed for wider recognition. Among established handbags, resale values moved unevenly: the Fendi Baguette’s average sale price has risen tenfold since 2016, from around 294 to 3,012 dollars, while the Celine Luggage and Prada Galleria have both lost value over the same period.