untangling the problem duplication in the fashion industry is like trying to re-wrap balls of yarn. Designer houses spend billions fighting off the dupes, but even the real Prada Cleos and Dior Book Totes are made using machines and templates, raising the question of what exactly is unique about an authentic bag. Is it simply a question of who gets the money? (Hermès recently launched, and won, a trademark war against “MetaBirkin” NFTs.)
Furthermore, replication is already woven throughout the entire history of apparel. Before industrialization, and long before handbags became popular as accessories, mimicry was essential to tailoring: wealthy women eyed fashionable silhouettes, then directed their own seamstresses to duplicate cuts, waists, or sleeves. . It wasn’t until the mass-produced inventions of the 19th century that designers became paranoid that riffraff could imitate their status symbols. In 1951, the American writer Sally Iselin Reported for The Atlantic about the deliberately snobbish shopping culture in Paris. But, she observed herself, while copyist was a dirty word in French haute couture circles, the expert tailors in Rome were more than happy to outfit her with cheaper cufflinks of the same ball gowns.
In Iselin’s day, such boutiques were a guilty wonder; today, shoppers are unfazed by the thought of buying a Balenciaga silhouette from Zara, Shein, or AliExpress. Even the super-rich crave a lot, like a Manhattan woman with a trove of super-fake Birkins. confessed to El Corte last year. On the other side of the world, in China, a country known for its counterfeits and which had no qualms about building a replica of the Gardens of Versailles — there are, by some estimates, as many as several million people making a living offering these good deals.
I spoke with Kelly, one such person, who was looking to take a look under the hood of the obscure business. (“Kelly” is not her real name; I refer to her here by the English nickname she uses on WhatsApp. I contacted over 30 different super fake bag sellers before one agreed to an interview ). Five years ago, Kelly worked in real estate in Shanghai, but she got tired of going to the office every day. She now works from her home in Guangzhou, often negotiating a Gucci Dionysus or Fendi Baguette on her phone with one hand of hers, and with the other organizing lunch for her 8-year-old daughter. Kelly finds the whole business of luxury handbags: the sumptuous leather, the razor-smooth heat seals, the hand-stitching, the precocious metal labyrinths of the ramrods. blood and clochettes and balls and memories — “too fussy,” he tells me in Chinese. But the work-life balance is great. As a replica sales representative, Kelly earns up to 30,000 yuan, or about $4,300, a month, though she’s heard of A-listers making as much as 200,000 yuan a month, which works out to roughly $350,000 a year.
On a good day, Kelly can sell more than 30 glittering Chloés and Yves Saint Laurents to a client base of mostly American women. “If a bag can be recognized as fake,” she told me, “it’s not a worthwhile purchase for the customer, so I only sell high-quality but also temptingly affordable bags—$200 or $300 is the point.” ideal”. Kelly keeps about 45 percent of each sale, of which she pays for shipping, shrinkage and other costs. The rest are connected to a network of manufacturers who share the profits to pay overhead, materials and salaries. When a customer agrees to order a bag from Kelly, she contacts a manufacturer, who arranges to have a Birkin bag shipped from the warehouse to an unmarked shipping box in a week or so.
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