Tariffs may be rattling the retail world, but they aren’t stopping New York’s wealthiest women from dropping $15,000 on luxury handbags — even if they’re secondhand.
Madison Avenue Couture is a discreet business that operates behind thick glass doors on an upper floor of a nondescript tower on West 57th Street. The Midtown Manhattan showroom is accessible by appointment only, and only after a rigorous vetting process.
“We make sure they are legit,” chief executive Judy Taylor told The Post, when asked how visitors are verified. “This isn’t a store where you can just come in and browse.”
Nevertheless, business is booming.
While much of the fashion world struggles, MAC — which specializes in pristine, previously owned Hermès, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton bags — is on track to grow 30% this year. Last year, it sold $50 million worth of bags, a 35% jump from 2023.
Most of the volume happens online. Last month, during a 90-minute visit with The Post, MAC’s VP of sales, Alexis Clarbour, was interrupted twice by a cash register ringtone on her phone. The first was an alert for the sale of a $4,500 Chanel clutch. The second was for a $5,450 Hermès Picotin.
On April 29 alone, as Taylor and Clarbour were busy opening a new boutique in Palm Beach, Fla., Clarbour said her phone ka-chinged five times before noon – netting the company $265,000.
“We could finally relax on the beach for an hour,” Clarbour joked.
The luxury market, which exploded during the pandemic, has cooled for giants like LVMH and Chanel. But MAC continues to thrive, with a shift toward lower-priced inventory helping drive sales.
Paris-based Hermès – whose coveted Birkin and Kelly bags can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $500,000 depending on materials and rarity – recently warned of price hikes in response to tariffs, although it declined to say by how much.
MAC is uniquely well-positioned to capitalize, according to Taylor. She notes that sellers appear to be motivated of late. Buyers, fearing yet higher markups to come, are scrambling to snag deals now.
“We’re in a sweet spot,” she said. “A lot of our sellers might be feeling some economic pressure, while our buyers are concerned prices will go up.”
During the massive stock market sell-offs after Liberation Day on April 2, “there was a shock factor” when bag sales paused, Taylor said. But it only lasted “for a couple of days and then people were buying again.”
Before the pandemic, MAC’s average sale was $26,000; now, it’s $14,000. Smaller items — like Hermès Picotin bags for $3,600, Evelyne bags for $3,750, and even wallets under $1,000 — are flying off the shelves.
“We decided to go into smaller, lower-priced bags, and that’s driven more sales,” Taylor said, adding that these items are increasingly hard to find at Hermès stores.
As for MAC’s showroom, it’s located in a district where smash-and-grab robberies terrorized posh Fifth Avenue boutiques during the pandemic – so security is tight. Prospective clients must submit to background checks, LinkedIn vetting and government ID verification.
Once upstairs and buzzed in through the thick glass doors, clients still face surveillance cameras and associates are armed with bank-teller-style panic buttons.
The precautions aren’t deterring shoppers. Since April, MAC’s two new showrooms in New York and Palm Beach have been fully booked, serving 15 private appointments a week. Guests are pampered with Veuve Clicquot while they inspect bags they’ve pre-selected online – usually around five during a given visit.
Accessories are brought in for customers from a nearby facility that evokes an overgrown, lavishly stocked, walk-in closet on Park Avenue – albeit one that’s impeccably organized, well-lit and housed in an office building. Shelf after shelf of rare handbags — many of them carrying five-figure price tags — lurk inside neatly arrayed boxes in various dimensions. The black boxes contain Chanel bags and the orange, of course, are Hermès.
“Pre-owned Hermès Birkin 35 Argile Swift Gold Hardware,” read the label on one large, orange box turned on its side, surrounded by dozens more. As of last week, the $16,000 item was marked “out of stock” on MAC’s website.
For the truly privileged, the experience is seamless — but not everyone makes the cut.
“It’s a very high-net-worth clientele,” Taylor said. “A lot of them work for investment banks, hedge funds, law firms — and they’re active in philanthropy.”
Every handbag tells a story — sometimes literally.
When MAC acquires a bag, its authenticators occasionally find personal notes tucked inside: Valentine’s Day love letters, Mother’s Day notes, and birthday greetings. The most touching ones are memorialized on MAC’s kitchen refrigerator.
“Happy Birthday! May this bag go on many new adventures with you,” reads one note. Another says simply, “To my dear friend and bestie.”
They’re reminders that while luxury bags may change hands, the sentiment — and the value — endures.
And despite tariffs, crime fears, and a rollercoaster economy, the ka-ching of Clarbour’s phone is proof: New York’s appetite for luxury is as insatiable as ever.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
