[PHOTO BY CAI MENG/CHINA DAILY]

Unable to afford that superb designer dress or fabulous gold watch in the shop window? Relax. The sharing economy has caught up with the world of luxury goods

I 'm wearing second-hand hats

Second-hand clothes

That's why they call me Second Hand Rose ...

I'm wearing second-hand shoes

Second-hand hose

All the girls hand me their second-hand beaus ...

Once while strolling through the Ritz, a woman got my goat

She nudged her friend and said, "Oh, look, there goes my last year's coat!"

It seems poor old Rose of the early 1920s song, which got a second-hand revival in 1965 thanks to Barbara Streisand, really did feel a social stigma about never being able to own anything that was brand new. But is being unable to get your hands on the very newest and the best as dreadful as it is cracked up to be?