It’s the eve of the spring 2026 season, which is stacked with 15 designer debuts, and all of us have questions. Conveniently, The RealReal’s eighth annual report is out today and studying it is a little like reading the fashion tea leaves. The day Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe departure was announced, searches for the brand on The RealReal skyrocketed 488%, and Demna’s Balenciaga-for-Gucci swap sent searches on his name up 310% in a single day. On the heels of yesterday morning’s announcement naming Rachel Scott as the new creative director of Proenza Schouler, searches for her own brand Diotima rose by approximately 350% by midday. In contrast, when Donatella Versace’s exit was announced it prompted a 13% lift, and Glenn Martens’s appointment at Maison Margiela produced only a 7% increase in searches.
Meanwhile, brands with no recent or upcoming creative changes are making their own impressive numbers: Coach searches are up 160%, Ferragamo has risen 129%, and Pucci is tracking 110% higher than last year.
But there’s more to the report than which brands are winning, and which are losing. The RealReal’s Chief Brand Officer Kristen Naiman sees a resale inflection point: “It’s gone from being a sort of alternate way to shop, or a secondary way, to more of a primary way that people shop and relate to fashion, learn about fashion, and discover things,” she says. A traditional retailer is moving, for example, 200,000 SKUs (or stock-keeping units) through their system a year. The RealReal moves 1 million SKUs through its system a month. The scale of one-to-one connection on the site, from one seller to one buyer is fairly mind-blowing, she acknowledges. “It allows people to look at fashion in a way that’s less linear, less bound by seasons. What that does culturally is it upends the sense that something is good for the time that it’s good.”
Consider Naiman’s own fixation on a particular pair of Phoebe Philo-era Chloé sandals—shoes that are now about 20 years old, but still look right to her. Naiman has set up an alert and scoops up fresh pairs in her size when they become available. “Those sandals have always worked for me. They’re always going to work for me. And so I have this relationship now to buying those sandals that are very specific to a certain era of Chloé. I’m no longer beholden to the same rhythms of the market. And I think that that’s a tiny, singular, personal example of what’s happened at scale.” Read on for specifics on The RealReal’s 2025 trends and how they may indeed impact the season to come—at the very least, they seem to suggest that nobody wants innocuous, anonymous fashion anymore, though noisy logos are most certainly for the moment passé.
Forget “New With Tags,” TRR Customers Are Shopping for “As Is” Goods
Sales for Fair Condition items (i.e. items with heavy wear) are up 32% this year, with growth driven by new buyers (+40%), and As Is items (which may require repair) have seen sales grow every month since launching in spring 2024.
“It’s an upending of, say, 10 years ago, when it was like, logo, logo, logo, pristine, pristine, pristine, and it suggests that people are open to this idea of patina and backstory as a way to indicate provenance,” says Naiman. “The provenance [now] is the life that somebody lived in it, and if the thing is thrashed, but in the most perfect way, there’s something about that that says it’s well-lived. It’s not, like, well-acquired, and that, to me, is super interesting.”
The spring 2026 takeaway: With well-patinaed and timeworn bags trending—Chanel (+15%), Balenciaga (+22%)—and vintage styles from the Chloé Paddington to the Celine Phantom also spiking, we may be in for more reissues and less innovation from the luxury brands.
Something Borrowed, Something Blue—Emphasis on the Borrowed
Searches are up for wedding dresses (+247%), vintage engagement rings (+198%), wedding shoes (+321%), and vintage wedding (+121%).
“It used to be that you couldn’t have somebody else’s wedding dress. You had to have the one that was made for you, that allowed you to think of yourself as a protagonist at this particular moment in your life, and it was unique to you,” says Naiman. “Now we’re seeing these huge surges in searches for wedding dresses that people wear and then re-consign. It’s a shift towards the sense of the communal or the collective. I actually feel, in a lot of ways, that resale is the oldest behavior. It’s what we always did forever: resell, reuse things, repurpose them, repair them. It’s almost, like, same behavior, new delivery mechanism.
The spring 2026 takeaway: So much for heteropessimism. These data points will encourage designers to add even more bridal-adjacent dresses to their warm-weather lineups, a trend we’ve been watching for years.
So Long, Kitten Heels; Stilettos Stage a Comeback
Kitten heels are down 16%, while searches for high heels (+26%), Louboutins (+34%), Manolo Blahniks (+24%), Dolce Gabbana (+29%), and Giuseppe Zanotti (+45%) are all on the uptick.
“We still have a bunch of sort of quiet luxury brands that are doing okay, but it’s neck-and-neck with a huge spike in jewelry and a really big spike in high heels,” Naiman points out. “I could think endlessly about the way that that’s connected to the aesthetics of our current political moment, but it’s undeniable that there’s a blingy, glamorous, overt thing that’s happening.”
The spring 2026 takeaway: More late ’80s vibes? We’ve been predicting a Bright Lights, Big City vibe since Jonathan Anderson’s Dior menswear debut in June.
They All Came to Barneys—And Bergdorf’s, and Bonwit Teller
You won’t find this in the report, but Naiman has anecdotal evidence indicating new interest in vintage department stores’ private label brands, a development that the arrival of Gene Pressman’s personal history of his family’s iconic New York store, They All Came to Barneys, and the reported tv adaptation are only likely to advance.
“I know quite a few people who have saved searches for Bonwit Teller or Barneys’ private label. It s indicative of a larger trend. In their heyday these department stores produced private labels in the same factories as the European houses, which means now, you can get incredible cashmeres, silks, or leathers on the secondary market for a fraction of the price,” she says. “To me, an increase in these kinds of searches reflects what savvy customers are bringing to the secondary market.”
The spring 2026 takeaway: Potentially more blazers, jeans, and other wardrobe standards, though hopefully not of the innocuous, anonymous variety.
