The Row's tailoring tends toward generous, relaxed proportions: long coats with a soft drape, blazers cut to hang rather than grip, dresses that fall away from the body. Toteme, based in Stockholm, works a cleaner and more graphic minimalism, with sharper lines and more defined shapes. Neither tendency holds for every piece, so when fit is the question, the listing photos matter more than the label.
Both houses build their core pieces in natural fibres, mainly wool, cashmere and silk. The care label is the thing to check in a resale listing, because a coat's value should track its composition as much as its brand. A cashmere-blend Toteme coat and a pure wool The Row coat are not a like-for-like comparison, however similar the silhouettes look.
Neither brand publishes a construction breakdown by style, and resale listings are the least reliable place to find one. What the retail gap buys is The Row's positioning: its coats and tailoring often cost several times Toteme's, and that difference reflects fabric sourcing, production scale and brand premium together rather than one identifiable detail. For either label, the useful checks are the same: how the lapel rolls, how the shoulder sits on the hanger, and whether the seller shows the inside of the garment.
There is no public dataset on how either brand holds value, so treat any fixed retention percentage with suspicion. The structural logic is clearer. A piece with a very high retail price has further to fall, and secondhand The Row often sits a long way below its original tag in absolute terms, even when the piece is desirable. Toteme starts lower, so the same proportional drop costs the first owner far less.
That asymmetry is the opportunity. A secondhand The Row coat can land near the retail price of a new Toteme one, which turns the question from which brand holds value into which cut you actually want. If you plan to resell later, Toteme's smaller absolute drop carries less risk. If you plan to wear the piece for years, The Row's secondhand discount is where the gap works hardest for you.
For a deeper look at how we calculate price scores, see our process overview.
