Finding designer bags is like hunting for antiques. You need to have both a forensic nose and an accounting mind.
Last year, I wanted to buy a discontinued LV baguette bag. I searched all the second-hand stores in Milan and Tokyo, but I finally found a bargain in the “unpopular gems” section of lxybags·ru.
They even reproduced the bamboo buckle oxidation process of the original 2003. Now this bag has become my social weapon. Last week, the Vogue editor at the next table asked me if it was an exhibit borrowed from the museum.
My cousin is even more amazing. She is a professor of mathematics and actually uses regression analysis when buying bags. Last year, she calculated the depreciation curve of the annual “It Bag” of fashion magazines and found that the average life cycle of the hit products is only 11 months.
Now she specializes in buying ultra-avant-garde imitations. Last month, she carried a strange bag with a metal spine shape to an academic conference, and was asked to cooperate by a group of biomechanics laboratories.
In her words, “When your bag is so complicated that you need to write a differential equation to open it, authenticity is no longer the point.”