While eBay can seem like a veritable treasure trove for designer goods, endless legal cases between designers and the auction site lead you to question not only the authenticity of products, but the ethics of picking up covetable items on the sly for rock bottom prices.
This doesn't however mean that we don't like a designer bargain, or can necessarily afford to swish down Bond Street filling our boots with expensive wares. A new fashion website, DesignerAuction.co.uk, which launched today, attempts to bridge the gap between accessibility, and credibility of source, which neither eBay, or other discounted fashion sites are able to do.
DesignerAuction.co.uk manages to offer discounts, from 10%-90% using a unique bidding system. Registered users purchase bidding credits at £1 per bid, and then bid for a variety of shoes, bags and accessories by designers including Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Ray Ban and many more.
The highest bidder wins the item, but with users only being able to bid £1 at a time, and actual money being at stake, the likelihood is that people won't get so bid-happy, and you could end up scoring a pair of wayfarers for as little as £10, or an obscenely expensive Chanel 2.55 for a fraction of its usual £1000+ price.
The downside is, if you lose the auction, you don't get your bidding money back, but the plus side is, the cost of your bidding will be deducted from the full site cost of the item, which is always around 10% lower than RRP, shouold you choose to buy it anyway. Essentially, it's not a place you go to bid on expensive things for shits and giggles, but if you were thinking of getting something anyway, you may as well get it from DesignerAuction.co.uk and take a chance at getting it cheap. Or you might consider it worth a £20 risk to potentially get a handbag worth thousands for hundreds.
The other great thing about the site is that unlike other cut-price designer e-tailers such as Net-a-Porter offshoot, The Outnet, who sell end of line pieces in limited sizes, items from DesignerAuction.co.uk come directly from the designer, allowing them to offer in season pieces in a huge range of sizes.
So while having to pay to bid does seem initially off-putting, if you can afford to pay full price, or don't mind losing a few pounds, the chance of getting as much as 90% off is totally worth it.