Anyone peddling pre-owned Birkin bags, Chanel suits, and Manolo Blahnik pumps is also in luck. The proprietors of luxury clothing consignment stores and websites are seeing increasing numbers of customers willing to sacrifice fashion for financial gain.

"Clients are ready to part with expensive purchases—that may not have been the right purchase—sooner," says Lucyann Barry, the owner of an exclusive luxury-goods consignment shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, who charges her clients a 50 percent commission on consignment sales.

In the past, she says, her fashion-editor and ladies-who-lunch clients would be parting with items that were several seasons old. But for the past three months, her shop has been stacked with in-season purchases—with price tags still attached. She points to a large python handbag ($4,600 at Gucci this fall; $2,799 at her salon) as evidence.

"It's a shift in the way they are viewing their assets," says Stephanie Phair, head of merchandising at Portero.com, a luxury-goods consignment website, of her sellers. They increasingly want to recoup some of the costs of old items before charging ahead with new ones, she adds.

"There's a sense that maybe they don't need two Birkins. They are seeing accessories as a tradable asset."

While business is good on the lower end of the spectrum, with a big increase in clients looking to sell one or two items as opposed to an entire wardrobe's worth, big-ticket items come through with some frequency too. Over the summer, Portero sold a $40,000 Birkin, a purchase for which the website gets a 30 percent commission. That raises a question: Amid all this economic turmoil, who's still interested in a five-figure bag?

"At the very high end, we're actually not seeing any difference," says Phair. "It's common knowledge that at the very high end of the industry, these people are immune to the recession."