STYLE RANT: FUN FAUX OR CRIMINAL COUNTERFEIT?

Recently, I did a workshop on counterfeit fashion for the Women’s Forum. In addition to the obvious (counterfeiting is a crime), my research raised some interesting issues.

We all like a bargain, and for every original product, there is a less-expensive alternative: Bayer aspirin or Top Value; DiGiorno frozen pizza or Giant. Then there is the cult of celebrity, where everyday people want Gwyneth’s hand-embroidered tunic top or Rihanna’s gown from the Met gala (to wear to what, I have no idea, but I digress). But there is a difference between a less-costly version of a consumer item and an outright fake, with moral, legal, and sometimes safety consequences.

Charles Frederick Worth, an English fashion designer working in Paris during the Gilded Age, is generally recognized as the first “name” designer. He was also the first to have his work copied without permission. As the exclusive world of designer fashion grew, so did the problem of unauthorized copies. Coco Chanel addressed the issue by licensing approved copies of her designs. After World War II, New York retailer Ohrbach’s imported couture samples from Paris to produce licensed copies and proudly presented them together at fashion shows. Counterfeit fashion really started taking off in the 1980s, as many designers struck licensing deals for everything from sunglasses to chocolates. The sheer range of designer-stamped products made them easy to duplicate, and manufacturing increasingly moved to China, where laws are very different and oversight from European or American business owners can be challenging.

Today, counterfeit fashion is available everywhere – on street corners, at flea markets, on the Internet, in that weird discount shop in the local strip mall. Like most illegal enterprises, reliable figures are hard to come by, but in 2013 the World Customs Organization estimated that fake fashion has caused the loss of nearly 400,000 jobs in the fashion industry and at least $750 billion (yes that’s billion with a B) in revenue over the last 20 years.

Some designers have responded to the problem of fakes by developing a less-expensive label, such as Marc by Marc Jacobs, or one-off mass-market deals such as Lilly Pulitzer for Target. But a quilted handbag with the interlocking “C” logo not made by Chanel is a counterfeit, and every bit as much of a counterfeit as fake currency. Yet, people who would never consider producing or passing fake $100 bills think nothing of buying a handbag with a glued-on “Prada” label from some guy on the sidewalk with a folding table and shifty eyes.

One of the ladies at my Women’s Forum workshop shared a story about falling in love with a Michael Kors bag she had seen at Macy’s but couldn’t afford. She found a website that advertised “genuine” Michael Kors bags at a steep discount, and offered an even bigger discount for buying three or more. As my grandfather would have said, “If it seems too good to be true it probably is.” This lovely lady didn’t feel quite right about this purchase and decided to sleep on it. When she went back to the website, it had been shut down by Michael Kors and was under federal investigation. As a sort of karmic reward, Macy’s sent her an email coupon, she got her real Michael Kors bag at a reasonable, legitimate discount, and everybody’s happy.

 Not all of the handbags from street vendors and websites are outright fakes, complete with logos and labels. Some are cute, inexpensive derivatives – designer-inspired, as it were, made of cheaper materials, less handwork, and overall lower quality than the designer bags on which they are based, but perhaps fun accessories for a season or two.

Or are they? Last year, Good Morning America did a segment on this subject and found that many of the bags and jewelry items sold by street vendors contained hazardous levels of lead. Similar tests on fake MAC cosmetics sold on eBay revealed high levels of carcinogenic chemicals in the Chinese counterfeit products.

Counterfeit goods are not limited to fashion and cosmetic items, but include drugs, food, aircraft parts, and pretty much any consumer product. Fake drugs fail to treat real illnesses and make people sicker. Last year thousands of children in China became ill and some died after being fed counterfeit baby formula. Counterfeiting – currency, drugs, handbags, whatever – is a crime, and even if the product itself isn’t dangerous, the people who manufacture and sell fraudulent goods usually are, as they are frequently involved in organized crime, money laundering, and a host of other criminal activities.

Another aspect of this “imitation game” is that people no longer recognize quality – they only recognize names. Christian Siriano of “Project Runway” fame designs a line of shoes for Payless, which I found on their website for $19.99 to $39.99. Some are, I think, “fierce.” My shoe designer of choice is Stuart Weitzman, and last summer I was delighted to find a pair of his snakeskin heels marked down to $159 at Lord & Taylor. He is not the same sort of celebrity; I can’t even remember seeing a picture of him. But I do theatre costume design and spend a fair amount of time searching for items in thrift shops, where I’ve seen worn, scuffed Christian Siriano Payless shoes priced at $24.99 sitting next to brand-new, never-worn Stuart Weitzman pumps for $9.99 (tragically, not my size). In our branding-run-amok, celebrity-driven world, value has been turned upside down.

And what does all this logo-brandishing, celebrity-copying say about who you are, anyway? Around the time that Charles Worth’s designs were being copied, a person could earn about $2 a day (roughly equivalent to minimum wage today) for strolling about wearing a sandwich board, a kind of walking billboard advertising a business or product. Who is paying you to deck yourself out in numerous logos? Oh right, you’re paying THEM. And if you are wearing a counterfeit product you are paying a criminal to advertise a product that belongs to someone else. (Ponder that for a moment.) I’ve also heard of people undergoing plastic surgery to have lips like Angelina or six-pack abs like that hot hunk in the Old Spice ad. If you’ve always hated your nose or getting rid of those love handles makes you happy, by all means do something about it, but being a better, happier you is very different from being a fake somebody else.

Interestingly, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago about the new “it” handbag having no logos or labels of any kind; only the true cognoscenti could recognize it from its quality materials, design and workmanship. We’ll see how that works out. Does anyone remember the discount retailer Syms, “Where an educated consumer is our best customer?” They went out of business years ago. Meanwhile, I am off to donate some client clothes to the thrift shop, and while I am there, I will look at shoes.

Posted Wednesday July 8, 2015 | Categories: Fashion, Lifestyle, Susan Boyd, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »