Three years ago, a London-based finance co-ordinator who works for a corporate company bought her first Hermès handbag. She now owns four. Having spent a little under ￡100,000, she plans to keep the handbags for at least five years and expects between a 40 and 50 per cent return on investment once she sells them.

“Coming from a finance background you can on your own see how profitable the market is and the returns you can get,” she tells the Financial Times. “It wasn’t really something that I had in mind, it was something that I was introduced to and I got to know slowly. Eventually I studied the market and saw that it is actually a good way to invest.”

The term “investment piece” is commonly used in fashion to describe pieces that are worth splurging on because of their timelessness. For a growing number of wealthy individuals, the expression has taken a much more literal connotation when referring to handbags.