The 15-person Gab Waller team, which includes 10 sourcing assistants scattered across the globe, has helped some 6,000 clients find their most-wanted luxury items, from new-season pieces (making up around 80 per cent of requests) to vintage and past-season items, which she refers to as “the ones that got away”.

With customers including celebrities like Sofia Richie Grainge, Khloé Kardashian, Lori Harvey, Chiara Ferragni and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (for whom Waller tracked down a Loewe suede and shearling coat), she’s built a reputation for helping some of fashion’s top tastemakers get their hands on the most coveted items.

The business has grown to the point that it can run without its namesake founder, and Waller now personally handles only around 10 per cent of requests. Even so, it’s a 24/7 operation with sourcing assistants strategically located to cover time zones, and Waller, who now spends much of her time in Los Angeles, mostly overseeing content and engaging with clients face-to-face. All conversations take place through Instagram DMs in a concerted effort to meet clients where they are.

“Each request is on a case-by-case basis, and we start with the designer,” says Waller, who, along with her team, will consider the regions the brand is more readily available in, the price point (a factor that typically favours Europe), brand relationships they can tap into, and time constraints – pieces that are sometimes needed for specific events or trips, for instance. “It’s a very speedy process,” she sums up.

Like Waller, New York-based Jennifer Nisan of the Instagram account FrontRowLive didn’t have sourcing mapped out as her career goal. Nisan was working in media in 2019 when she posted a photo of a limited-edition Gucci bag, and had a friend ask where she bought it. “I got the bag for her – I started calling every Gucci store in the country until I found it,” she says.

If the high demand for Waller and Nisan’s expertise is any indication, luxury sourcing is gaining ground fast. Not only have the rise of vintage and archival fashion upped the value (and appeal) of unique and hard-to-find treasures, but a more pragmatic, long-term approach to shopping is incentivising a growing number of people to invest in items they love, even if it takes longer to find them.

“Within fashion there was always this idea of ‘newness’ being what we talked about and past seasons being less relevant. In the last five years we’ve seen this shift,” says Erica Wright, who founded digital marketplace Sourcewhere in April 2021. “The customer wants a mix of past and present.”

“We’re here to democratise the personal shopping space – you don’t need to have a membership or spend a certain amount to send in a request,” says Wright, who sees the rise of sourcing as evidence of a more thoughtful way to shop (she cites the platform’s 0 per cent return rate as evidence). “They want to hold onto that piece for a long time. We think of our community as conscious collectors – they’re not just buying.”

When it comes to the hottest pieces of the moment, those in the sourcing space know what’s selling. Shoes are Sourcewhere’s top-performing category, and the marketplace saw the first wave of demand for the Alaïa mesh ballet flats (the most requested shoe for consecutive months this year). Wright also continues to see high interest for Phoebe Philo’s Céline designs, as well as key accessories by The Row, like its Everyday and Margaux bags.

Experts also have a pretty accurate idea of what’s going to fly off shelves. Waller calls the new Loewe Squeeze bag a new “It” bag and always keeps an eye out for shearling sandals and mules, like the Fendi Feel suede and shearling slides. For the autumn/winter season, Nisan is “obsessed” with the Alaïa Eyelet embellished leather shoulder bag, and Loewe’s Spoiler aviator mask sunglasses.

In the long-run, Wright sees Sourcewhere’s success as a sign of wider shifts in the way fashion and merchandising work with the undoing of the new-old dichotomy. “A lot of brands and retailers will start to get on board with blending old and new together,” she says, noting that extended sales periods could, as a result, become a thing of the past.

“That, for [shoppers], is so much more interesting than getting an email that says, we have literally 2,100 new arrivals this week,” she adds. “How do you possibly curate that amount of content for it to be desirable? There’s definitely a scroll fatigue that’s happening and we’re trying to be the antidote.”