Styling a Burberry Scarf + Shopping Luxury Pieces Pre-Loved

I've lusted over Burberry scarves for several years now; they're a classic, neutral accessory that you can wear with tons of different outfits, and will always be in style. Lucky for me, my sweet husband spoiled me with one as an anniversary gift because I had been talking about wanting one around that time, and he snapped up a pre-loved scarf that I had been considering getting for myself.

I'm all for buying pre-loved when it comes to luxury pieces. Buying pre-loved is often the best option because you can get a hold of hard-to-find pieces, often save some money, and shop more sustainably. I took to some of the most trusted luxury resale sites to look for my perfect scarf. I ended up finding one on Tradesy that I loved but wasn't sure if I was ready to pull the trigger on, but it turned out that I didn't have to because Kenny ended up surprising me with it for our anniversary!

I was so excited, but when it came in the mail, I was suspicious that the scarf might be fake. Overall it looked really good, but there were a few telltale signs that made me feel like it was counterfeit. When I cross referenced the physical scarf with the Tradesy listing, I saw that the tags were completely different, so I was pretty sure at that point that the seller had duped us.

Burberry scarves are a little difficult to authenticate on your own since there are so many different iterations of them and the tag styles change from year to year, but this article and this article were the most helpful for me in deciding whether I should send my scarf back to Tradesy for authentication or not.

Tradesy has a 99.7% accuracy rate with maintaining only authentic pieces on their site, but unlike sites like Fashionphile, sellers don't have to send items to them before they're shipped to the buyers, so Tradesy doesn't authenticate items in person unless there's an issue - my impression is that most of their authentication occurs via the images the seller provides. Luckily they also have a great return policy (not that I even have to say this, but I am not sponsored by Tradesy haha), and anytime you have questions about the authenticity of an item, you can send it to them for authentication (which is free for the buyer). Lo and behold, when Kenny sent the scarf back to Tradesy, they confirmed that it was a replica and gave him his money back. The whole process took less than a week and it was super easy.

I've never bought via Tradesy before, and even though I had an initially bad experience with a seller, it ended as a good experience. I ended up getting a different scarf that WAS real, easy peasy. Fashionphile and TheRealReal are my two other favorite sites to browse for pre-loved luxury items; they both have great reputations and I have friends that have purchased through both of them with success.

If you want to skip the hassle of wondering whether or not a scarf is authentic (which clearly they can't always be, even when buying from reputable resale sites), brand new ones are available here, here, and here!

Now onto the fun part - styling! I compiled some of my favorite outfit inspo featuring a Burberry scarf from some of my favorite bloggers. Most of them are understated, more neutral outfits, but I found some great pop-of-color options as well. I sometimes find it hard to get excited about dressing up when it gets super cold out, but these have me excited to style some warm and cozy layered outfits!