What happens when an imitation is not a cheap typo, but a perfect copy of the original, but sold at a lower price? How many people will resist buying a “superfake” product if they have nothing to envy from the respective brand.; Their reporter The newspaper “New York Times Amy Wang she talks about her experience of ordering such a product and introduces us to the world of “ideal” fakes.

“Not so long ago I ended up in Paris with a “monkey” bag from home on my shoulder. Celine. In France, a country that prides itself on its influence on the world of fashion, the penalties for imitating are severe, to the point that I face three years in prison.

However, the human eye would not be able to distinguish the original from the copy. Like any exact imitation, the bag was made with the same design and materials as the “original”. However, it was essentially a scam.

How did I get to the “source” of fakes

I entered the world of “superfakes”, incredibly faithful fakes, a few years ago. It was early 2021 when I saw an ad showing model Kaia Gerber holding a Celine Triomphe clutch. small rectangular bag. Then I was told that it cost 2200 euros. From my research, I was informed that this price was inflated.

As a child of first-generation immigrants, where Pizza Hut was our store, I knew these foods were not for me, just like formal dinners or chartered Gulfstream jets were not for me. But after a few days due to quarantine, I found myself searching on Google. “How to buy Celine Triomphe cheap”. This search led me to a community of fake enthusiasts on Reddit who exchanged information about “reliable sellers” who could deliver the item. Chanelone Low Puzzle the same Hermes Birkin at a price of only about 5% of the original.

Superfake sellers usually ask for payment via bitcoin or prepaid gift cards such as Amazon or iTunes cards. These payment methods allow merchants to avoid detection and maintain their anonymity.

From China to the USA in three weeks

I chatted on WeChat with someone named Linda. She immediately sent me photos of a dozen Celine Triomphes. He told me that I can ask a specialist to check the photos before sending the bag. And the cost is about 915 yuan, that is, 132 dollars.

I hesitated for a few days, and then texted her, “Cream please.” It was midnight in China, but Linda answered me after a few seconds: The bag will be at my door in about three weeks.

Exploring the problem of imitation in the fashion industry is like trying to rewind threads. Fashion houses spend billions to fight fakes, but even real Prada Cleos and Dior Book Totes machine bags raise the question of what is unique about them. Is it just about who wins the most? (Recently, Hermès started and won a trademark war against NFT MetaBirkin.)

After all, copying runs through the entire history of fashion. In 1951, American writer Sally Iselin, looking for a dress in Paris, wrote in The Atlantic about the snobbish culture of the Parisians.. She noted at the time that while “imitation” was a taboo word in French high fashion circles, some tailors in Rome were more than willing to make a similar dress for her at a significantly lower price.

At that time, such tailors were hard to find. Today you can buy a bag in the style of Balenciaga on Zara, Shein or AliExpress. Such cases are sought even by the rich, as he admitted last year in “The Cut, a Manhattan woman with a wardrobe of super Birkins knockoffs.. On the other side of the world, in China – a country famous for this and does not hesitate to build even an exact copy of the Versailles Garden – there are, according to some estimates, several million people who earn their living in this profession. .

With a salary of $4,300 per month

Kelly lives in Guangzhou, China and worked in a real estate agency five years ago. Today, she works from her home, doing leather work, heat sealing and hand stitching. As an agent for a counterfeit company, Kelly earns up to 30,000 yuan, or about $4,300 a month.

On a perfect day, Kelly could sell over 30 Chloé and Yves Saint Laurent dresses, mostly to American women. She keeps about 45% of each sale, of which she pays shipping costs. “If a bag can be identified as a fake,” she notes, “it’s not a worthwhile purchase for a customer, so I only sell high quality bags that are also temptingly affordable – $200 or $300 is quite an attractive price.” she says.

Guangzhou is estimated to be home to the vast majority of the world’s superfakes, and experts attribute the lightning speed of delivery to advances in technology.

Some superfake producers even go to Italy buy leather from the same markets as the big brands, while some buy real bags to study every detail. The Chinese authorities, for their part, have little incentive to close these businesses, given their contribution to the local economy and China’s deteriorating political ties with Western states.

What can the secret reveal?

However, luxury handbag imitations insist that there is always a “secret” that gives them away. At RealReal, designer bags go through a rigorous inspection process, including x-rays and millimeter-precise dimensional fonts.

However, one industry insider I spoke to admits that it’s not always that easy. The imitations become “so good that you really have no idea, and so it turns into a time-consuming witch hunt.” He and his colleagues have their own theories about how superfakes are such replicas: “We suspect that the work is done internally, someone from Chanel or Hermes may be supplying them with leather or other materials.”

After weeks of tracking on the DHL website, the Celine Triomphe has arrived. The box was slightly dented from traveling through Abu Dhabi and ports in France and Italy before it ended up in my hands in New York. I ripped off the paper to get the Triumph. At first glance, nothing was found. I honestly measured the letters and then the dimensions. In my hand, the leather felt a bit stiff, less plush than the bag I’d touched in Celine’s Soho boutique. But only I knew that.

The 29-year-old TikTok creator who has made videos about handbag fakes told me she sometimes thinks of them as “the democratization of fashion.”

In the context of growing inequality around the world, it is no longer fashionable to keep expensive things anyway. Actress Jane Birkin, who gave her name to the Hermès bag of the same name, doesn’t care about fake Birkins bags: “It’s great that everyone has or has one,” she told Vogue in 2011. — If people want a real one, ok. If they want imitation, I have no problem. I really don’t think it matters.”

According to the New York Times