Moral Hazard

Read this article from the New York Times on how buying counterfeit goods haev a deleterious effect on your overall moral compass.

See? I'm not just making this stuff up!!!

Wishful Thinking

Sometimes, when you're me, you have to be the bearer of bad news. The pooper on the party, as it were. Which last week resulted in me saying something that greatly disappointed someone I like a whole bunch. I felt bad about it, but I had to tell her, "Oh, honey, no. Those are fake."

It started with an e-mail from my friend, the lovely Elke, who has it bad for a pair of boots. These boots:

And who could blame her? These are Louboutins. The style is called "Babel," which I don't think is a well-chosen name because if you ask me those are pretty damned easy to understand. In three words? Gorgeous. Freaking. Boots. Maybe it's supposed to be "Babble," as in: the stream of nonsense syllables I'd be likely to spew uncontrollably if presented with a pair of them.

Elke and her husband were on a visit to Chicago and Elke met the boots in Saks. She was smitten; and apparently her husband was also smitten, to the tune of commenting that even he'd like to try on those boots. (See, that's a discerning male eye. If it's beautiful, it's beautiful, and there's no sense in going all Fear of Pink on us just to preserve your man-cred. Go with it -- enjoy the beauty.)

What will de-smitten a gal pretty quick about these boots is the price tag: almost 1400 smackers.

Yeah. Ow.

So Elke went a-huntin' on the interwebs for the boots and she found this link, which sent to me, asking me if I knew anything about this site.

What do I know? I know everything on it is fake, that's what I know. First off, those boots on this fake site are $274.00. As I told Elke, I don't think you could even get those boots wholesale for that price. If you click on the picture of the boots above it will take you to the Net-A-Porter link for them. If you do that you will notice they've been reduced from $1475 to $997.50, which is a pretty good reduction, about 30%. You might also notice, if you look carefully, that they are sold out. So the things are going for a cool grand on sale and they are still sold out. Do we really think these people have sooooo many of these stuffed into a warehouse somewhere that they can afford to let them go for 3 Cs a pair? Unlikely.

Here's the other way I know for sure this site is full of counterfeits.

This, they claim, is a red ostrich leather Hermès Birkin bag, available for $399.00.

BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!!!!

First off, Birkins start at around $7000. That's for cowhide -- exotics like ostrich can cost three, four, five times that (or more) easily. Secondly, the only -- I mean ONLY -- place to get a brand-new Birkin (or a Kelly, for that matter) is an actual, brick & mortar Hermès boutique. You must walk in and put your cash on the barrelhead, so to speak, and even then you're not guaranteed to walk out with one because there is often a wait list for these bags, depending on what color & skin you want. Hermès does not sell these bags anywhere else; not their online store, not any luxury department stores, certainly not in outlets. I double-checked this information with a very nice SA at the Dallas Hermès boutique, so I know this is true. It is possible to find genuine Hermès bags through reputable re-sale dealers, but they usually get snapped up pretty quick and they're not sellin' for 400 bucks.

So that bag above? Is a counterfeit. I have ranted here before about counterfeits and so I'll spare you the bulk of it. Suffice to say that I feel quite strongly that no matter how badly you want something, no matter how much it tugs at your soul, there is never an excuse to buy a counterfeit version of it. You are simply buying into a system that exploits people all over the world. And? You've got a fake. It's fake. That thing you loved & wanted? Is not what you have -- you have a fake. You have an unreal, cheap, artificial version of the thing you loved & wanted -- like a Madame Tussaud's wax statue of your husband or wife instead of the flesh and blood human. It will never be as good as the real thing, and you will always know it.

So back to the boots. Those are some lovely Loubies and I would never dissuade anyone who had room for them in her budget and closet from purchasing them. I would not encourage it if it's going to be a financial hardship, because no boots are worth sitting up at night worrying that you can't pay your mortgage. But if a person did want to splash out that kind of scratch (say she has a Luxury Tithe, or a nice fat tax refund coming), these boots would be a worthwhile investment. I don't think they are going to go out of style ever -- that is some classic, classic footwear. That is important criteria to take into consideration when trying to build a quality wardrobe, especially if you, like most people, are thinking a little more about your budget than you might have been a year ago.

There's a good argument to be made that when you have less disposable income, you should buy fewer disposable clothes. When times are flush & you toss away 50 bucks on a pair of shoes you're only going to wear for a few months, it's not such a big deal. When every penny counts, so does every purchase. And if you happen to have 140,000 spare pennies, this is not a bad way to spend them.

The Real Thing

A friend/client is smitten with a particular Miu Miu bag that she can't find. She sent me a request to keep an eye peeled for it and a link to an eBay auction of one so I'd know what it looked like.

(It looks like this. Cute, huh?)

I did a little research and wound up talking to a lovely gal named Renée at the Miu Miu boutique in Soho. Since I didn't have the style number for the bag, she asked if I could forward the photos of the bag to her via e-mail. A little later (big points for Miu Miu customer service, by the way) she phoned me back to give me some details about the bag and another really interesting fact: Miu Miu never produced that particular bag in red. What that means is that the bag in the photo above is counterfeit.

So, yeah, the counterfeit thing. I think many of us know that a big percentage of what goes for genuine on eBay is counterfeit. And I guess a lot of folks don't care. Apparently enough people don't care that the counterfeit market is a huge and ever-growing one. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here lecturing you with all the specific reasons why counterfeiting is not a victimless crime. I'll leave the economic arguments to wiser and pointier heads than mine. Suffice to say that along with generally frowning on ripping off other people's ideas & intellectual property, I don't want to carry a bag that was made by a little Chinese girl whose legs had been broken so she couldn't escape from the factory. I don't know about you, but I don't think my karma is sturdy enough to withstand that sort of assault.

But people do buy these fakes, squillions of 'em, and some of the reason, I think, can be found in little bon-bons like this:

(Yves Saint Laurent -- the Muse.)

Oh, I love this thing. I cannot tell you why, there's just something about it that resonates with the harmonics of my aesthetic soul. (That's fancy talk for "Preeeeeeetty!!") I'm not the sort who often falls prey to the It Bag Syndrome. I think we've firmly established that I am an Olympic-level Shoe Ho, but handbags do not usually inspire this sort of palpitations in me. Of course, I like a good handbag. I am one of those folks who feels that the old saw about accessories being the place to put your money is true. But some of my very favorite bags are little vintage sweeties I've picked up for less than 20 bucks.

(Candy-apple red patent. Oh, the love...)

But that Muse bag... oh, that's a beauty. I've seen them in person. The same stroll through Neiman's that unleashed the Want Monster I talked about a while back also gave me a chance to introduce myself to this lovely. It is a beautifully-made bag, it hung perfectly from my shoulder, it was surprisingly light for its size. Very, very nice. I really love this bag, and if I had scads of spare cash I'd buy it in a minute. "Scads" is the operative word here, because this baby costs $1300.

Plus tax.

Ya know what? That is crazy. It is crazy that they are selling $1300 handbags and it is crazy that we are buying them and I'm just as crazy because the truth is I lust in my heart for that thing and I know that if I had $1300 just lying around (under the coffee table, maybe, or in the sock drawer), I'd buy it! So for all those people with Want Monsters more persistent than mine, who also don't have that kind of scratch to throw at what's basically the glorified descendant of the saddlebag, suddenly the $199 version available on the 'Bay might not look like such a bad idea. Hey, ya know -- it's leather, it's nice, it looks real... What the hell, right? There are even websites devoted to them where they make no bones about them being counterfeit -- only they call them "replicas" so it sounds nicer. (No, I'm not giving you any links to any of those sites! Little Chinese girls, remember?? Broken legs!!) So at the risk of playing Blame the Victim, I have to ask -- are the companies making the $1300 bags in some way contributing to their own problem? I'm well aware that there are some design labels whose financial foundations are built on their accessories lines, especially their bags, and so those companies are going to work those bags for all they are worth. But. Is it possible that if the real things were a little bit more accessible there might be less demand for the fakes? I dunno. Maybe.

Now, I am a big believer in "you get what you pay for." I do believe that there is a noticeable difference in quality between that Muse and the $30 vinyl number you can buy at the big box discount store, but I don't know if it's honestly $1270 worth of difference. And I'd like to think that even if I had the means I wouldn't fall prey to this sort of outlandish consumerism, but I don't know if that's true, either.

I'm the sort of person who's never going to be happy with the "replica" version of anything -- every time I looked at it I'd remember that it was a fake, and it would rob me of all my enjoyment -- and this means it's not really a decision I have to make. I'm never going to buy the counterfeit. But for those of you who might not feel that way, those of you perhaps perusing eBay stores that promise you genuine designer goods at a fraction of the price, I'm going to just say it one more time:

Little Chinese girls. Broken legs.