Should You Beat Up Your Birkin? Why Worn-In Luxury Bags Are Selling Fast
Stylish women are pooh-pooing pristine purses. Is it fueled by inflation? Y2K nostalgia? Is it just cool? An investigation into the tattered-bag trend.
4 min
ABOUT 20 YEARS ago, while dining in San Francisco, Lisa Unger Sandman was nearly startled out of her seat. “Oh, my God! That should never be on the floor!” shrieked a woman at a nearby table, pointing to Ms. Unger Sandman’s black Hermès Kelly bag. Chastened, Ms. Unger Sandman, now a retired banker in Raleigh, N.C., snatched up her purse which, in the current market, often costs at least five figures. “It caught me off guard,” she recalled. Today, Ms. Unger Sandman, 60, would ignore such a reprimand and isn’t so worried if her Kelly risks bodily harm. “If a bag has a scratch on it, that means you’ve enjoyed it. I’m happy with the patina.”
Ms. Sandman’s attitude reflects a growing trend. Lately, women are both embracing their handbags’ scratches and stains and seeking out visibly worn-in styles on the secondhand market. In its 2023 luxury consignment report, resale site the RealReal noted higher demand than ever for bags in “fair” (i.e., heavily worn) condition. Similarly, at resale platform Vestiaire Collective, co-founder Sophie Hersan reports that sales of worn-in designer bags have jumped 13% in the last six months.
Why the sudden craving for beat-up bags? One of the biggest draws, posits Katie Devlin of trends and insights company Stylus, is the Y2K revival and the resurgence of “indie sleaze,” a grungy, aughts-era aesthetic. She references the circa-2010 style of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Famously on their arms back then: decimated Hermès Kellys and Balenciaga bags (like the one shown here). “It’s the idea of looking expensive but like you don’t care—of not looking overly curated,” said Ms. Devlin.
In that regard, the trend, which encompasses luxury bags by the likes of Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, as well as label-free vintage styles, may be a backlash to the picture-perfect world of Instagram and wealthy reality TV stars (see the seemingly untouched designer bags that line the Kardashian clan’s walk-in closets). “There’s a move away from this idealistic, filtered look we’re so used to seeing,” said Dayna Isom Johnson, a trend expert at online marketplace Etsy, where searches for Y2K handbags are up 51% in the last three months compared to the same period last year. “Now people are really embracing the realness and messiness that comes with living everyday life.” Not using something that costs so much, Ms. Isom added, makes people feel “very wasteful.” Elizabeth Layne, chief marketing officer of resale site Rebag, has observed a resistance to feeling “too precious about [luxury] workhorse bags of lower grades. You don’t have to worry if it gets a scuff.”
New York stylist Malina Joseph Gilchrist agrees. “There’s a quiet luxury thing happening…a reaction to a congested market of handbags that are logoed and attention-seeking.” With a worn-in bag, she said, “you look like you’re not trying too hard.”
For Sapna Bhatla, 42, a business strategy consultant in Philadelphia, beat-up bags—whether trendy or not—speak to her identity. After immigrating to the U.S. from India, her style-savvy mother would combine her traditional attire with vintage estate-sale finds. So “pristine feels contrived and inauthentic to me,” Ms. Bhatla said. “If you see my body, I have scars. I have marks. I have a life that’s been lived. And I’m happy to have signs to remind me of it. I like things that show a test of time and sturdiness and resilience.”
She owns an arsenal of worn-in designer purses—some she marred herself, others that she scooped up on eBay. Among her favourites is a decades-old, no-name leather bag she found at a Paris flea market. “I’m not so crazy about brand names when it comes to vintage. If it’s here today, it’s already good quality.”
Those scars should not be haphazardly patched up, said Sofia Bernardin, founder of luxury vintage platform ReSee. “There’s nothing worse than a badly repaired bag. It’s like a woman who’s had too much Botox—she’d have been better off not doing anything.” Still, not all decay is desirable, said Kristin Whalen, 36, a San Francisco senior director of client management and bag obsessive who’s had some of her styles since high school. For her, protruding structural wires and age-induced deformities are nonstarters. Trend analyst Ms. Devlin maintains that, while the optimal degree of destruction is a personal choice, “if it’s not functional and your strap is falling off, it’s time to say goodbye.”
Is inflation driving this so-called “trend”? Recently, the cost of new luxury bags has skyrocketed. According to Jefferies Group, the price of Chanel’s coveted small classic flap bag increased about 60% between 2019 and 2022 in the U.S. Meanwhile, on the RealReal, bags in “fair condition” cost on average 33% less than already-discounted “good condition” options, said Noelle Sciacca, that site’s fashion lead. Lara Osborn, reseller Fashionphile’s vice president of procurement, offers a reality check. “We have to ask ourselves: Is a [worn-in] bag really chic, or is the economy just dictating that we’ll be wearing bags with a lot more love?”
Ms. Joseph Gilchrist insists it’s the former. If your bag’s beat-up, she said, “you just look cooler.”
How to Make A Beautiful Disaster
Is your fancy handbag looking too new? Here, four inadvisable but foolproof ways to pulverise even the sturdiest purse.
1. Toss your pristine purchase in the washing machine—and choose the most punishing spin cycle. For extra distress, add bleach.
2. Give that immaculate purse to your puppy. If he seems uninterested, slather it in peanut butter and present it again.
3. Buy a top-notch bow and arrow and use your bag for target practice. Ignore its faint whimpers each time it’s pierced.
4. Drop it at an osprey breeding site so a hen can use it in her nest. Once the chicks have fledged, retrieve your totally tattered tote.
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
4 minA sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.
The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.
The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.
This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.
The debt behind the AI build-out
Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.
Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.
JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.
The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.
That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.
A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.
When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.
Inflation changes the calculation
September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.
The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.
CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.
Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.
Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.
The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.
China adds another source of pressure
Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.
Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.
The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.
That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.
A reset rather than the end of the boom
The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.
What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.
The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.
More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.
For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.
Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.
The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.
Fact box
Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent
Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent
Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent
SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent
US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually
Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion
Located steps from Crows Nest Metro, the near-complete development brings luxury living to Sydney’s Lower North Shore.
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
