Luxury Goods Editing and Proofreading Services

A consignment handbag is listed as "100% authentic, guaranteed" with a photograph of a hardware stamp and a serial number. The seller has looked at the bag, believes it is genuine, and is prepared to say so, but "guaranteed" implies a process — an authentication method, a standard, a recourse if wrong — that does not actually exist behind the word. A buyer paying four thousand pounds based on that single word has no way to know whether it was checked against a database, examined by a trained authenticator, or simply looked plausible to someone who wanted to sell it.

We edit what resale and consignment businesses produce to describe the authentication behind a luxury item — authentication process disclosures, condition grading for pre-owned luxury goods, provenance and ownership history documentation, return and guarantee policy wording for authenticity claims, comparison content distinguishing genuine features from common counterfeit indicators, and the correspondence responding to an authenticity dispute. Our editors work on the word "authentic" and what it is actually standing on.

The stated authentication method is what gives the word "guaranteed" something to actually mean, and its failure is a confidence claim with no visible process behind it. Guaranteed authentic describes an outcome; it does not describe how that outcome was reached, and a buyer cannot evaluate a claim with no method attached to it. We work through these so the specific authentication process is named — a specific in-house method, a third-party authentication service, a named specialist's credentials — rather than left as an unsupported assertion, since a buyer deciding whether to trust a four-figure purchase needs to know what standing behind it actually consisted of; so condition is graded against a specific, defined scale with the meaning of each grade stated, given that "excellent condition" applied inconsistently across listings tells a buyer nothing they can compare between two items; so what happens if an item is later found to be inauthentic is stated specifically — a refund, a timeframe, a process — rather than implied by the word "guarantee" alone, because a guarantee with no stated mechanism for honouring it is not a guarantee a buyer can rely on; so provenance information is disclosed to the extent it is actually known, distinguishing verified history from an unverified claim by a previous owner, as these carry very different weight; so common counterfeit indicators specific to the brand and item are addressed directly where relevant, since a buyer with some knowledge of what to look for is more confident than one asked simply to trust the seller; and so a dispute over authenticity is met with the specific evidence behind the original claim rather than a repetition of the original assurance. Descriptions written this way let a buyer evaluate the claim instead of simply trusting it.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including item details, authentication records and customer information. We are editors rather than authenticators, appraisers or luxury goods specialists, and we offer no view on authenticity, provenance or valuation. What we can do is make sure the claim shows its own basis.