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The devil carries second-hand Louis Vuitton

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-27 08:31

If you desire to be the devil who wears Prada, like Miranda Priestly, but cannot afford it, just go and buy some second-hand designer stuff.

Susie Qin, a 25-year-old woman working for a PR agency in Beijing, didn't dream of Prada. Instead, for long she had longed for a Louis Vuitton bag. And she finally got one (a Cherry Speedy) from Milan Station, one of Beijing's most popular second-hand luxury-goods stores.

Half an hour after getting a call from a Milan Station salesman, she had put her paraphernalia into the handbag and paraded out of the store.

"I had been dreaming of having the bag for years but it was unavailable in the market and I never thought I would be so lucky," Qin said. "I asked the salesman to put my name on the waiting list for the 'cherry bag' six months ago."

A new Cherry Speedy handbag would have cost about 8,000 yuan ($1,170), but Qin paid only 5,990 yuan for the second-hand one. But Qin was happy: "It's a fair deal it has been taken good care of its edges are not worn out or torn."

Milan Station, a leading player in the second-hand luxury market, set up its first store in Hong Kong in 2000. Now it has 10 stores in Hong Kong and one each in Taipei and Macao. It opened its first outlet on the Chinese mainland in Beijing last year.

Tucked away in an alley next to Shin Kong Place, one of Beijing's high-fashion addresses, Milan Station has hundreds of designer bags, including Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton. The more expensive ones that can go for anything above 10,000 yuan.

Milan Station manager Mo Mo said: "Prices of the handbags depended on how much they had been used. Out-of-market or limited edition bags are costlier but still they're lower than the original."

Only prices of bags like Hermes' Birkin, one of most prized luxury collections that can fetch 70,000-80,000 yuan, are 5 percent or so higher than the original, she said. And the waiting period for such bags can be up to years.

"Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Hermes' Birkin bags are the most popular brands. Our clients vary in age, but most of them are between 20 and 40 though even teenagers come to sell or buy."

Zhang Xue, 22, an undergraduate student in the UK, had some handbags that she wanted to sell in order to buy new ones. "When I first went aboard and saw luxury bags I'd never seen before I bought many of them on impulse only to realize later they didn't suit me," she said.

Sales of luxury goods on the mainland from Dec 1, 2007, to Jan 31, 2009, was $8.6 billion, more than that in the US, said US-based World Luxury Association, making it the largest luxury goods market in the world after Japan.