the times | Monday May 23 2022 5times2
handbag sells every 15 seconds.
Don’t I know it. One of my first
rodeos involved a leather Coach bag
for which I set a “buy it now” price of
£60: someone snapped it up before I’d
even logged off. I found out
afterwards that the same style can
sometimes go for up to £300, so
these days I do a bit more
research. I know editors who
pay someone (often their
assistants from the office) a
cut to do all the photos and
uploading for them. Just
think what a team my
daughter and I will make
once she’s able to read.
From Brownie uniforms to
Boden, eBay is a treasure
trove of children’s clothes
and the Insta-mum
accoutrements that have
become so prominent during
the early years. If you want a
£350 leopard-print Artipoppe
baby sling for half the price,
look no further. Fashion PRs
scout for baby Veja trainers
on there instead of paying
£75 for something that fits for
three months: there isn’t much
wear and tear when the person
in them hasn’t started to walk
yet. I’ve just sold the baby seat
from our cargo bike that our
son recently grew out of —
£45 — but I’ve had to plough
that back into the items in
his wardrobe that he’s grown
out of too. I am on a
learning curve but, the pros
tell me, it is “all about your
saved searches”. Decide on
the labels you’re interested in and
set alerts.
I’ve noticed the brands that
sell best are not necessarily
the most haute (Chanel on
eBay should be viewed with
extreme suspicion) but the
most familiar and reliable.
The ones people know
their sizes in already. The
Kitri wrap dress I wore
while pregnant was snapped
up almost immediately,
likewise a pair of Kurt Geiger boots. It
also helps when items are having what
fashion people call “a moment”: my
Whistles cargo pants are cool again
but no longer fit. That’s £45 that might
cover a now eye-wateringly priced
family brunch.
Still, I’ve learnt not to sweat
whether something reaches what I
rather pompously like to call its RRP
in the listing, as though I am Mr WH
Smith himself. As long as you don’t
end up out of pocket on the postage
charges (another lesson: always add
on enough to cover tracking), enjoy
the fact of money coming in as the
tide of stuff in your home recedes
somewhat. If I sell a few things at
once, my husband — whose
wardrobe space I have all but
fully cuckooed — refers to it as
“an enema”.
Speaking of irrigation, I’ve
never been one for bunging
myself up by watching Love
Island but I might tune in
this summer just to see if
any of them are wearing
my old cargo pants.sold some in-the-sale Alexander
Wang platform boots so tall even
the catwalk models hadn’t been
able to walk in them. I made £50
from the Celine shoes and have
finally learnt, as a person who
never wears heels, to stop
buying them.
What the pandemic did to our
perception of what we own versus
what we need has been great for eBay.
The platform registered 50,000 new
sellers in April 2020 and the number
of shoppers using it doubled that
month. Then it was sales of hot
tubs that spiked by more than
1,000 per cent, but these days asponsors such as Missguided and
I Saw It First. Rather than being
arrayed in disposable £12 dresses
that many charity shops now
won’t accept and that contain so
much stretch they don’t degrade
in landfill, the islanders will be
styled in “pre-loved” pieces
selected by the former
Cosmopolitan fashion director
Amy Bannerman. She’s yet
another front-rower whose
wardrobe has long had a
revolving door.
“I’ve been selling on eBay for
20 years — there’s nothing
more satisfying,” she tells me.
“The rare 1970s sofa I bought
on there for £1,200 is now
worth £10,000. I think of it
as my pension pot.”
“There’s no shame in it!”
agrees the journalist Pandora
Sykes. “I sold a Kate Moss for
Topshop dress that didn’t fit at
the height of its cool and got
hundreds of pounds for it.”
Even at the upper end of
the scale, the 0.01 per cent
are finding liquidity in their
Chanel archive and Birkin
backlogs on luxury resale sites
such as Hardly Ever Worn It (Hewi)
and Vestiaire Collective.
“People are changing the way they
engage with their clothes,” says
Tatiana Wolter-Ferguson, chief
executive of Hewi. “Fashion is
becoming more like an asset class.”
That’s what I’m telling myself as
I release equity from the things I no
longer wear and sometimes never
have. It’s as much an exercise in
conscience-management as
fundraising. A pair of Christian
Louboutins bought for £60 at a sample
sale when I was an assistant 12 years
ago turned a profit, as did a pair of
Bicester Village Celine heels, and IBuy it now:
what I’ve sold
Peloton bike
Bought for £1,700, sold for £850Bike seat
Bought for £67, sold for £45Whistles cargo pants
Bought for £129, sold for £45Kitri wrap dress
Bought for £100, sold for £50Christian Louboutins
Bought for £60, sold for £100Celine heels
Bought for £80, sold for £130Alexander Wang boots
Bought for £120, sold for £70Adidas trainers
Bought for £55, sold for £45Babybjörn bouncer
Bought for £185, sold for £120Mulberry wallet
Christmas gift, sold for £157Moschino
phone case
Christmas
gift, sold
for £55Cashmere
scarf
Bought for
£100, sold
for £50COVER AND BELOW: OLIVIA BEASLEY FOR THE TIMES; ALAMYi th aleAlexanderhandbag s
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tVIA BEASLEY FOR THE TIMES; ALAMYBike seat
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Ghost dress:
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Chic hand-me-downs, any takers?