23 January - Real & Fake

I meet a friend who says ‘If I’d known you were going to HK I’d have asked you to bring me back a fake handbag’.
I answer ‘No, I’d have said no can do’. She looks up from her fake little black Prada and gives me the ‘eh? You mad?’ expression so I explain. First of all there are too many shapes and sizes and styles and the whole thing would have taken much texting/calling/double checking and secondly there are good and bad fakes and the good fakes cost around a £100 or so (these are what you find a lot of on Ebay ladies, just in case you thought you were really buying a cast off or because there was an oversupply at Chanel and the factory just had to get rid of them (as if) and so you know, spend the same on a regular handbag. Then there are the bad fakes, mostly for the poor people, you know the Chinese from across the border who come into HK on a shopping trip or for the poor people of Hackney or Willesden or some such, basically the ones that feed the non luxury market.
The good fakes are for the City PA’s and for the people who step off the cruise ships in HK and may pretend when they get home that they got a good bargain in HK or NY or Rome. Or they may be acknowledging it’s a fake, and perhaps even be proud of it, ‘Look what I got’. But why? There are other bags with those shapes and sizes and you don’t need the logo right? Or do you? For the avoidance of all doubt, I read in an interview with the chief exec of Gucci that all their lines are manufactured in Italy and that’s exactly to justify the (perceived) superior quality and therefore the uniqueness and the price. And the didn’t seem to bothered by the fakes. Basically by the time you sold me one bag at £700/1k from one of your own managed shops, then your mark up is so high that you can afford to sell just a few thousands and not hundreds of thousands to make your money. So yes, there have always been ‘seconds’ that escape out of the factory but if I were Mr Gucci I’d have these destroyed so beware of what you buy.

J, the Chinese wife of our Chinese ex banker friend showed me her Gucci at dinner in HK and put me on the spot asking me to identify it. I was pretty worried this would be the start of a bad friendship (we’d just met), but I couldn’t lie. I said ‘My feeling is that this is not a real Gucci’. She said ‘Correct, but tell me why?’ So I told her the stitching on the inside of one handle was not even and it wouldn’t have gone out of the factory that way. Er… plus they don’t do it in that colour.

Trust me, I carried a fake LV (the old classic small hold-all shape) all the way through college. Back then I had to have it as the entire school did (half had LV, half had Gucci- am hazy as to the significance of either in terms of tribes) and it pained me to have it as it was brown and I don’t do brown. But back then it was good quality, there were few around and mine carried heavy loads, dictionaries and stuff for a good 5 years before it started to unravel at the handle and the piping. This probably would have happened to the real one too given the weight. I am not sure that I wasn’t pitied by the girls who did know I couldn’t afford a real one and so mine was an obvious fake though I may have passed it off as a gift from a granny. Who knows, I don’t remember, but I did very little other coveting of brands. Think jeans mattered but in the opposite way ie you wore something nobody had or was unfashionable to differentiate from all the girls who had Levis’.

Anyway, there was so much fakery in HK and the fact that it was not displayed in any iconic way, you know, THE one bag alone in a window with spotlight and plush surroundings that made it the queen of bags to behold, meant it all looked like a jumble. Fake Hermes Kelly? Just a big shopping bag. Fake quilted Prada euwwww that was last year, fake little quilted Chanels with chain handle? Funnily enough these looked pretty normal as they’ve always done but all the other styles were too much. Funny as well how there’s no macqueen, no louella, no paul smith, no stella, no cavalli etc. IT’s still the same YSL, Dior, Chanel, Fendi, some ferragamo, prada, gucci, some armani, oh and those Longchamps the French like.
But I’d have had to spend hours to find one that really had comparable leather to the originals and I’d have been worried I’d overpaid for it etc. It was the same with sunglasses and watches (in this case nobody makes fake Rados, the only ones I’d consider buying – yep… you didn’t know I was a hip hop girl did you?) and I didn’t even trust regular shops, you know regular opticians, to have the real brands, after all what could be better than passing off a cheap fake frame for the real thing, ie. sell it at the top price? After a while even if you were an honest optician you’d be a fool not to make larger profits.

My fake Prada toting friend just says ‘Why do you have to over intellectualise everything, maybe people just like that shape and nobody else is making it’ . True…. She then reaches for a cigarette and tells me all her ‘guys’ (she works in an investment bank) bring her back fags for a few quid as they buy them in the middle east. I’m clearly too worried about fakes because I say ‘How do you know that those are real Marlboros? Why would they be so cheap? Maybe there’s less tobacco in them and more cancer’.
I get another 'pitying you' look. She does them very well S., in her unique Carribbean way.

Ps. Noticed some schoolgirls following morning at bus stop, all around 12/13 with very made up faces, tiny bodies and huge fake handbags… that will be who wants them then, and has probably saved up for the fake. That is history repeating itself then, that’s a version of me with the brown monogrammed LV at college. Am glad it’s taken me this tortuous way to explain fake bags. I guess my thinking now is that if you’re in possession of a job and over 25, you’re a sucker if you buy one, but anyone else is fair game.