If you check my feed on here regularly you’ll know like many I love expensive I can’t afford and do most of my shopping for clothes and shoes secondhand.

I recently read an article published by Fashionphile I am not alone. What used to be a dirty little secret 20 years ago, with the rise of fast fashion, cheap disposable and exploitative Chinese copies from the likes of TEMU, DHgate and Alibaba, saying it’s Vintage, Vinted or Recycled, Thrifted or Charity Shopped is a new chic all on it’s own. Translated “You can have it, it’s a one off.”

And as people get poorer and aspiration dies fashion companies are making less and the audience to find those precious gems in circulation gets bigger.

My mother has two catch phrases she repeats, “knowledge is power” and “the pen is mightier than the sword” and so I am writing down and sharing a recent discovery when trying to find out about a beautiful leather jacket I found online secondhand for a song after purchasing a pair of Sandro sneakers on a whim and then discovering they are impossible to style because of the stand out green laces.

The jacket looked absolutely fantastic, classic cut, black leather with a bright green lining (perfect for styling my sneakers) but with no brand label to guide me I knew it could be too good to be true, why would someone sell a £500 plus leather jacket for £50 right? They wouldn’t. I couldn’t just trust my instinct alone.

On first inspection I thought it could be a vintage piece from the French design house Jean Louis Scherrer, it looked like a piece of his but no brand label and the content label was polyester ribbon, too new to indicate vintage. When you cannot touch a garment it’s sometimes hard to tell the quality from a picture, but the covered lambskin buttons told me this wasn’t a cheap garment, the process of covering buttons in leather is intricate and time consuming, you don’t get that detail on a less expensive jacket.

I also found out brands have one off runway pieces and samples in circulation that never get a label, and luxury brands that put chains in the neck of garments especially leather are easily removed or can become detached. I discovered brands like Bally, Prada and Burberry remove all brand identifying labels on product that isn’t sold into their top tier supply chain to not devalue the brand so luxury unbranded goods are in circulation if you can find them.

I searched online to find the same or similar jacket to identify it before purchasing, my search yielded nothing except I did discover something I didn’t know.

Brands like Sandro, Maje, Comme De Garçons, Agnes B all French luxury clothing brands that sell into the global supply chain have to meet strict Japanese regulations regarding their labelling.

The Japanese are extremely discerning and particular when it comes to what they buy and wear and would not accept companies who don’t meet their strict exacting standards which meant my secondhand jacket find definitely came from a luxury house even though I had no idea who.

My other top tip, if you can find an RN number on a garment you can identify who made it. These product identifiers are often obscured in inside seams, inside pockets and on the reverse side of content labels, things secondhand sellers don’t know a) what to look for and b) don’t provide images of. You cannot really ask a seller either to search as you may alert them to having or selling something worth a lot more money and kill the deal for yourself. Why I prefer actually shopping, where I can actually see and touch something before I buy it that online where it’s easier to make a mistake.

I recently looked at a leather jacket in Sandro and the price tag on sale was £1200 way over my budget showing if you know what you are doing shopping secondhand there are still some unbelievable bargains to had.

You might not be able to read Japanese, your smart phone comes in handy here but if you see a garment you like with a content label in English, French and Japanese you can pretty much guarantee it’s a luxury designer item, even without a brand label to guide you.