On a latest afternoon in SoHo, Seth Weisser and Gerard Maione had been checking in on their store, What Goes Round Comes Round, a luxurious classic boutique on West Broadway that has lengthy been a downtown vacation spot for stylists and celebrities.

They stepped previous Jean Paul Gaultier shirts from the late Nineteen Eighties and Harley-Davidson biker jackets from the Sixties earlier than coming into the world containing their huge Levi’s assortment. Mr. Weisser, who was carrying a classic Hermès jacket, gingerly took maintain of a pair of Nineteen Fifties-era denims. The worth was $3,000.

“These would possibly appear like peculiar Levi’s, however the denim connoisseur who sees somebody carrying these goes to know precisely what they’re,” he stated. “That is the start of quiet luxurious.”

Certainly one of their common clients, Stefon Diggs, a large receiver for the Buffalo Payments, was shopping close to a model holding a quilted Chanel purse made within the Nineteen Nineties.

“You beat my Jets yesterday,” Mr. Maione referred to as out.

“Yeah, however you guys beat us final time,” Mr. Diggs replied.

Mr. Diggs ended up shopping for two Chanel purses. Outdoors the shop, a pal took footage of him modeling his purchases in entrance of an S.U.V.

“I’ve been purchasing at What Goes Round Comes Round for a very long time,” Mr. Diggs stated, mid-pose. “I like classic as a result of it’s timeless, so I wish to stack up on it right here.”

Mr. Weisser, 56, and Mr. Maione, 55, grew up in neighboring cities on Lengthy Island. Mr. Weisser’s mom was a gymnasium instructor, and his father was a lawyer; Mr. Maione’s household ran an Italian deli.

The 2 males grew to become mates at Syracuse College within the late Nineteen Eighties. They started thrifting at avenue festivals and flea markets within the Nineteen Nineties, after they discovered that their greatest shot at entering into Manhattan nightclubs like Spy Bar was to have a slick look.

The hunt for classic grew to become their obsession. At a rag home within the Bronx, they stuffed trash baggage with rock live performance T-shirts and a pair of Levi’s made through the Eisenhower administration; on the Rose Bowl car parking zone in Pasadena, Calif., they purchased uncommon denim from the backs of vans.

They opened What Goes Round Comes Round in 1993. In these days, secondhand meant second-rate to a lot of the style set, and the duo noticed themselves as downtown entrepreneurs whose mission it was to evangelise the gospel of classic.

“The stigma was that folks felt it was beneath them to purchase one thing used,” Mr. Weisser stated, “however we noticed carrying classic as giving somebody individuality.”

Their first regulars included Jean Paul Gaultier and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Stylists for “Intercourse and the Metropolis” discovered outfits there for the present’s star, Sarah Jessica Parker, who grew to become a consumer herself.

“New York has an extended historical past of classic, nevertheless it’s the way in which they pursued items with legacy that at all times made them stand out,” Ms. Parker stated. “There can be solely one among one thing there, not multiples of it. And that’s when classic will get actually particular.”

“They’re not the RealReal,” she added. “What they do feels slightly extra rarefied. Generally you need to be a little bit of a vogue historian to grasp what they’ve, nevertheless it’s definitely worth the effort.”

After three a long time in enterprise, What Goes Round Comes Round has an outpost in Beverly Hills and a lately opened second boutique in SoHo. Its buyer base consists of Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Lenny Kravitz and Kate Moss. Gadgets now on sale embody a Hermès “pochette” purse ($34,500), a Chrome Hearts alligator zip pouch ($3,500) and a leather-based Christian Dior cap ($775).

Lately, as high-end classic put on grew to become a booming enterprise, Mr. Weisser and Mr. Maione discovered themselves competing against the enterprise capital-backed consignment platform the RealReal, the web market Vestiaire Collective and different comparable companies.

To bolster their e-commerce division, they lately began a web based store, in partnership with Amazon, and commenced producing a livestream purchasing series hosted by the purse historian Mason Howell. Episodes have included “Gossip Lady Fashion” and “Impressed by Priscilla Presley.”

“By way of all our on-line competitors, we had been a bit late to the sport in chasing that concept, so we’ve needed to resolve the best way to differentiate ourselves,” Mr. Weisser stated.

Mr. Maione supplied the opinion that their rivals purchase extra indiscriminately. “A number of the stuff is fluff,” he stated. “We curate to a really excessive degree, and the one closets we’re going into are ones that we all know have pinnacle items.”

“That’s why we get the stylists and the celebs,” he continued. “As a result of they know they’ll be the one ones on the market carrying one thing in the event that they’ve gotten it from us.”

Additionally they mirrored on a much less apparent edge they could have on the competitors: their decadeslong friendship.

“We’ve been by way of so much collectively, from recessions to 9/11,” Mr. Maione stated. “However we at all times have one another.”

Their bond, they stated, helped them endure a painful downsizing through the pandemic that pressured them to shut places in Miami, East Hampton and the Higher East Facet. Since 2018, they’ve additionally been in litigation with Chanel, which sued What Goes Round Comes for trademark infringement, an allegation they deny. (Chanel, which has an uneasy relationship with the luxurious resale sector, sued the RealReal that same 12 months.)

When requested how they hunt for classic clothes today, Mr. Weisser and Mr. Maione stated the particulars of acquisition are commerce secrets and techniques, however allowed that they make visits to the closets of a trendy eccentric on Central Park South and that they take common journeys to the Paris flea market at Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine.

“We nonetheless combat to get into one of the best closets,” Mr. Weisser stated. “The hunt is what retains us going.”

As night approached, the duo drove by way of the Holland Tunnel towards their 35,000-square-foot warehouse workplace in Jersey Metropolis. They entered by freight elevator and made the rounds of cavernous stockrooms crammed with packing containers of Rolex watches, bundles of Seventies rock live performance T-shirts and towering piles of Louis Vuitton monogram baggage.

They paid a go to to their e-commerce workforce and greeted a member of their authentication division, who was inspecting a Gucci bag with a magnifying glass for any indicators of subtle fakery. Then they stepped right into a room crammed with heaps of Levi’s.

Mr. Maione ran a hand throughout a pair of denims with just a few tears within the material.

“It’s getting tougher to search out the outdated Levi’s stuff,” he stated. “There’s not a lot of it left on the market now. The supply of it’s all drying up. However denim by no means goes unhealthy. It solely will get higher.”