Meet Anna
Anna is the Sydney-based founder of Inherited, a curated online destination for rare 90s and early 2000s designer handbags: globally sourced, expertly authenticated, and impossible to replicate.
In her mid-twenties, Anna built Inherited from a personal obsession: the discovery that vintage designer pieces from fashion’s most defining era, the Marc Jacobs years at Louis Vuitton, Galliano’s Dior, early Fendi, Miu Miu, and Prada, were not only more beautiful than their modern counterparts, but increasingly rare, increasingly valuable, and almost impossible to find in genuinely excellent condition.
Where other resellers chase volume, Anna chases rarity. Every piece in the Inherited archive is hand-selected against a strict brief: it must be from the right era, in outstanding condition, and the kind of bag that makes you stop. Each one arrives with a certificate of authenticity, complimentary express shipping worldwide, and the confidence of knowing it has been through a rigorous curation process before it ever reaches you.
Inherited is for women who collect fashion, not just wear it.
Condition-perfect. Authenticated properly.
What inspired you to start Inherited, and what problem are you most passionate about solving for your customers?
It started with a Dior. A vintage Galliano-era piece I found and bought before I fully understood what I had. The moment I held it, the weight of it, the quality of the canvas, the hardware, the way it had been made to last decades, I couldn’t look at modern fashion the same way.
I started researching obsessively. The Marc Jacobs era at Louis Vuitton. The Fendi Baguette and its three cultural waves. The Galliano years at Dior that produced some of the most inventive, most wearable, most collectible pieces in fashion history. I realised that the 90s and early 2000s represented a golden period, a time when the major houses were at their most creative, their craftsmanship was exceptional, and the pieces they produced were built to be handed down.
The problem I kept running into was finding them. Not just finding any vintage designer bag, finding the right ones. Condition-perfect. Authenticated properly. From the specific eras and designers that actually matter to collectors. That search was the gap. And Inherited was my answer to it.
The problem I’m most passionate about solving is trust. Buying a $2,000–$4,000 bag online, from someone you’ve never met, with no physical store to walk into, requires an enormous amount of confidence in the seller. I built Inherited to be the brand that earns that confidence, through rigorous authentication, radical transparency about condition, and a curation standard that means if a piece is in the archive, it genuinely belongs there.
“I realised the 90s and early 2000s represented a golden period, pieces built to be handed down. Finding them properly was the gap. Inherited was my answer.”
On Choosing The Hard Path
What has been your biggest challenge as a business owner, and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge has been the deliberate choice to do this the hard way.
I could have built a simpler business. Buy popular designer pieces at low cost, flip them quickly, repeat. That model works. It generates volume and it generates cash flow. But it’s not what Inherited is for.
The path I chose, sourcing only rare, era-specific, condition-perfect pieces from the golden age of designer fashion, is genuinely difficult. The pieces I want are not easy to find. They require sourcing networks, patience, an eye for what’s authentic versus what’s been repaired or misrepresented, and the discipline to walk away from a piece that doesn’t meet the standard, even when you’ve spent time and money finding it.
There have been moments where I questioned whether the standard was too high. Whether I was making things unnecessarily hard for myself. Whether I should just stock more, source faster, lower the bar slightly.
And then a customer would receive a piece, a Galliano-era Dior, a Graffiti Speedy, a denim LV from the Marc Jacobs era and send a message that described holding it for the first time. That reaction, every single time, confirmed that the standard was the point. The difficulty of the curation is exactly what makes the archive worth having.
The way I overcame the doubt was simple: I kept going back to why I started. The pieces. The history. The irreplaceability of what I was building. That’s still what drives every sourcing decision.
“There have been moments I questioned whether the standard was too high. And then a customer would receive a piece and describe holding it for the first time. That reaction confirmed the standard was the point.”
Saying No Instead of “Yes”
If you could share one key strategy or mindset that has helped your business grow, what would it be?
Curated scarcity is more powerful than volume.
The instinct when you’re building an e-commerce business is to stock more. More products mean more options for customers, more chances for a sale, more revenue potential. The data seems to support it. But for a luxury archive brand, I believe the opposite is true.
When every piece in the Inherited archive has been hand-selected against a strict standard, when nothing is there by accident, nothing is filler, nothing is there just to fill a page, the customer feels it. The edit itself becomes the signal. It says: this founder has taste, this founder has standards, this founder has rejected more than she has accepted to build this collection.
That feeling is not something you can manufacture with volume. It comes from restraint. From the willingness to hold fewer, better pieces rather than more average ones.
The mindset shift that changed everything for me was moving from thinking like a reseller to thinking like a curator. A reseller asks: what can I sell? A curator asks: what belongs here? Those are completely different questions, and they produce completely different businesses.
Inherited exists to answer the second question. And that discipline, saying no to pieces that don’t meet the standard, even when it would be easier to say yes, is the single most important thing I’ve done to build the brand.
What we’re doing is rare
How do you stay inspired and motivated on tough days?
Honestly? The bags.
I know that might sound too simple. But when the hard days come and they do, because building anything from scratch is genuinely difficult, I go back to the pieces. I’ll pull out something from the archive that I’ve been holding. A Galliano-era Dior with perfect hardware. An LV Graffiti Speedy in a colour that hasn’t been produced since 2001. A condition-perfect Fendi Baguette from the original era.
There is something about holding a piece that was made with that level of craft, at that moment in fashion history, that resets everything. It reminds me why the standard matters. It reminds me what I’m actually building not just a business, but an archive. A collection of objects that represent a specific, unrepeatable era in fashion. Pieces that, in another ten years, will be even harder to find.
That perspective, the long view, is what gets me through the short-term difficulty. The work is hard because what we’re doing is rare. And rare things are worth the difficulty.
The go-to curated archive for rare 90s and early 2000s designer handbags
What is one exciting project or goal you’re currently working on, and where do you see Inherited in the next 12 months?
The next 12 months for Inherited are about building the authority the archive deserves.
I’ve spent the early phase of the business proving the concept, proving that there is a customer for rare, properly curated, era-specific designer pieces. The response has confirmed that. The pieces sell. The customers who find us understand exactly what we are. The challenge now is reaching more of them.
The most exciting project I’m working on right now is the archive education series, a content strategy built around teaching people why these pieces matter. The history of the Sprouse collab. The Galliano era at Dior. Why early 2000s Miu Miu is one of the most undervalued categories in the vintage market. Why denim LV from the Marc Jacobs years is increasingly rare in genuinely excellent condition. I want Inherited to be the place people come not just to buy, but to understand. That authority is what builds the long-term brand.
In 12 months, I want Inherited to be recognised as the go-to curated archive for rare 90s and early 2000s designer handbags in Australia and increasingly, internationally. The pieces we source are globally desirable. The authentication standard we hold is internationally relevant. The archive we’re building belongs to a global collector community, and that’s the audience I’m building toward.
“I want Inherited to be the place people come not just to buy, but to understand. That authority is what builds the long-term brand.”
If you’ve ever loved a bag, not just worn one, but genuinely loved it, the Inherited archive was built for you.
Browse the current archive at inherited.com.au. Every piece is photographed in full detail, described honestly, and available with free express shipping worldwide. If you have a question about a piece, a sourcing request, or you’d like to be added to the Private Archive List for early access to new arrivals before they’re listed publicly, reach out directly via Instagram or the website.
The archive changes constantly. When a piece sells, it’s gone. That’s the nature of what we do.
