Why I Fell in Love With Louis Vuitton (And Never Looked Back)
I got married at 18. Young, I know. Looking back now, running a business, managing a team, making decisions every single day, it's strange to think about how young I actually was when my whole world changed. But that's the truth of it, and it's the honest starting point of how LeveLux came to exist, even though at the time I had no idea I was starting anything at all.
My ex-husband was from California. I was from a small town, the kind of place where nobody was talking about designer anything. Nobody around me growing up had a closet full of labels, nobody was comparing hardware finishes or debating which season a bag came from. That whole world simply didn't exist where I was from. So when I moved into his world, it was like stepping onto a different planet. He introduced me to things I had genuinely never encountered before. MAC makeup. Coach. Designer pieces that, to everyone around him, were just normal, everyday things people owned and talked about and shopped for on a random Saturday. To me, every single one of those things felt like a discovery. I remember the first time I actually held a designer item that wasn't mine, just turning it over in my hands, running my fingers over the stitching, and thinking, why does this feel so different from anything I've touched before.
I got hooked almost instantly. Not in a shallow way, at least it didn't feel shallow to me at the time. It felt like I was finally being let in on something. Like there was a whole language of quality and craftsmanship and detail that everyone else already spoke fluently, and I was scrambling to catch up. So I started buying. And buying. And buying some more.
For a while, I bought everything. Three hundred dollars here. Five hundred dollars there. Sometimes closer to seven hundred, on a single item, without blinking, because in the moment it always felt worth it. It wasn't just about having nice things. It was about chasing that specific feeling you get when you finally own something that used to feel completely out of reach. That feeling doesn't last very long though. You get it home, you use it for a while, the newness wears off, and before you know it you're chasing the next thing to get that same hit again. That's exactly what was happening to me, piece after piece, without any real plan behind it.
It added up fast. Faster than I wanted to admit at the time. And honestly, looking back, it wasn't smart. I wasn't building anything. I was just spending, replacing one item with the next, never really holding onto any of it long enough to understand its actual value, financial or otherwise.
It took my mother-in-law to say the one thing that changed everything for me. I don't even think she meant it as some profound piece of advice. I think she just said it plainly, the way you'd point out something obvious to someone who hadn't noticed it yet. Why don't you just get a Louis Vuitton bag, she said, instead of buying so many things. That was it. One sentence. She wasn't trying to teach me a lesson about money or investing or resale value. She was just being practical. But that one sentence rearranged something in my head that never went back to the way it was before.
That one sentence is the reason LeveLux exists. I want to say that plainly, because it's true, and because I think people assume businesses like mine start with some grand five year plan, a spreadsheet, a business plan pitched to investors. Mine started with my mother-in-law being blunt with me over something completely ordinary.
I bought my first Louis Vuitton not long after that conversation. And something clicked in me that I genuinely did not expect. It wasn't just that it was nicer than the things I'd been buying, though it obviously was. It was that it held its value in a way nothing else I owned ever had. I could wear it constantly for a year, decide I wanted something different, sell it, and get my money back. Sometimes more than I'd paid. That had never happened to me before. Not once. The MAC eyeshadow palette I'd been so excited about a year earlier was worth basically nothing by the time I thought to check. The Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, was worth what I'd paid for it, or better, even after a full year of actually using it, not babying it in a closet.
That contrast is what changed how I thought about spending money entirely. I started paying attention to resale value the way most people pay attention to investing, reading, comparing, trying to understand why some things hold up and others fall apart in value almost overnight. Which brands actually hold their worth. Which ones lose half their value the moment you walk out of the store with the bag on your arm. Louis Vuitton, over and over again, in my own experience and in what I started noticing about the resale market more broadly, kept proving itself. Not because it's flashy. If anything, the classic pieces are almost understated once you know what you're looking at. It holds up because the demand for it never really goes away, generation after generation, and because the quality is genuinely built to last. A Louis Vuitton bag that's five or ten years old can still look and feel incredible, structurally sound, ready for another decade of use, if it's been taken care of even reasonably well.
From that first Louis Vuitton bag, I branched out. Chanel. Gucci. Bottega Veneta. Coach. Eventually sunglasses, wallets, small leather goods, all the way down to pieces that most people wouldn't think twice about. Different brands, different price points, different reasons people fall in love with each one. But the thing that stuck with me from that very first Louis Vuitton purchase never really changed, no matter how much the collection around it grew. Not everyone can afford brand new, all the time, and honestly, they shouldn't have to. Buying preowned is not settling for less. Half the time, it's the smarter version of the exact same purchase, the same craftsmanship, the same brand, the same materials, just without paying the premium that comes from being the very first owner.
That's the whole idea behind LeveLux, if I had to boil it down to one sentence. I'm not selling you a bag because it happens to be trendy this particular month, and I'm not chasing whatever's currently going viral. I'm selling you the same thing I had to learn to buy for myself, back when I was a very young mom with a lot more taste than budget, figuring out how to want nice things without making financial decisions I'd regret. Something real. Something that holds its value instead of quietly losing it the second you walk out the door. Something you can actually look at, months or years later, and still justify buying.
I think about that version of myself a lot, the one who didn't know what MAC makeup even was, let alone what separates a bag that holds its value from one that doesn't. I don't say that to be dramatic about it. I say it because I think a lot of the women who shop with LeveLux are somewhere in that same place I was. Maybe they grew up somewhere that designer anything wasn't really a conversation. Maybe they're just starting to build the kind of financial confidence where they can ask themselves, is this actually worth it, instead of just wanting something and buying it. I want LeveLux to be the answer to that question, over and over, piece by piece.
If you're on the fence about your first real designer piece, my advice is the exact same thing my mother-in-law told me all those years ago, just said a little differently. Stop buying five things you're going to forget about in six months. Buy the one thing that's actually going to be worth something in five years. It doesn't have to be Louis Vuitton specifically, though I'll always have a soft spot for it, for obvious reasons. It just has to be something real, something with actual craftsmanship behind it, something that will still be worth owning long after the excitement of a new purchase wears off.
That's the whole reason I do this. Not because designer bags are glamorous, though sometimes they are. But because I remember exactly what it felt like to not know any better, and I want to be the person who helps someone else skip straight past that part.
Follow LeveLux, and catch our live shows on TikTok and Whatnot: Instagram · TikTok · Whatnot · eBay
