buying fake luxury items online to fit in.
I fell in love, like anyone does. By seeing Vivienne Westwood earrings on the internet 2 years ago. My first thought was, “oh my god, these earrings look like tiny planets — they’re perfect for my completely space themed wardrobe.“
My second thought was, “Jesus fuck — these earrings are $300”.
I’ve always been broke (and wanting to not look broke). My wardrobe has been built from years of scouring through Goodwill and online thrift stores looking for a deal.
Admittedly, I’ve also felt resentment towards luxury brands for their insane prices compared to the quality. So, when I learned about how easy it was to buy fake designer stuff through Reddit, I fell for the trap.
I turned 23 last month, and am dealing with a crisis of adulthood. To cope, I ordered 4 pieces of jewelry, and 3 bags — all knock-offs of Vivienne Westwood.
Obviously, fake designer goods are illegal. They are rip-offs of pre-existing goods with markers from a brand who didn’t sell them. Other times, they are re-imaginings of items adjacent to, but not quite, the item.
There’s a spectrum of replicas for every budget. You can find a $25 Hermes Birkin (a $30,000+ bag that you have to spend a certain amount of Hermes to buy), or a $600-$1,000+ one that’s a 1:1 replica.
If you spend time in any major luxury brand subreddit, you’ll see the ‘auth’ posts. These are posts made by people who are looking at purchasing a luxury good, and are scared it may be counterfeit.
This was how I got into Vivienne reps: the actual people in the subreddit recommend buying fake jewelry because it’s the same quality as the real stuff. And the resulting difference means it’s incredibly hard to determine what jewelry is real to the untrained eye.
It starts in China: Chinese factories are usually the source of luxury goods, even if the luxury brands don’t want you to know it. And, if you’ve been following online commerce — you know we’re in a major boom of factory direct to consumers.
This is mostly shown in the massive success of Temu — but it’s been dormant since AliExpress and Wish. There’s always been a demand for these platforms.
Factories are learning they can cut out the middle man and sell directly to customers in addition to wholesale, supplying them with more consistent business. And the average US consumer is realizing how much cheaper it is when that middle man is gone, meaning there’s no short supply of people looking to buy things direct from factory.
—
If you want the actual good shit, you don’t go to Temu. You bridge the gap and enter the Chinese internet. China’s internet and the US’s are completely different and often walled-off from each other. This creates ingenuity within the replica goods market.
Yes, there are the people who do buy replicas and intend to sell them as the real deal. But, there’s people just like me who like the look of the brand, and not the price. They talk.
You find a private forum, which vets sellers and talks about payment methods. And then it gets fucking crazy.
People in China know that making and selling fake goods is illegal. So, it’s all a relational game. You have to find the items you want within a Chinese website — usually something like a TaoBao. Use a translator plug in and create a Chinese payment account to get access to it. Or, you find a private Chinese agent online — usually those linked to specific factories, recommended by other people’s posts.
You send the agent or factory a payment through PayPal, or another form of international payment. Then, you work directly with your Chinese agent through WhatsApp to send them links for the item you want, and they order it directly within China to their personal warehouse.
You might find a catalogue through asking on WhatsApp, or from a direct storefront online that contains images of items from the factory catalogue.
You take those images, order through the store, and reach out to the seller through WhatsApp with your order number to remit payment. These direct storefronts are like gophers — most fall and will pop up under a new URL, or a new name.
These factories are similar to brands in their own way: some make incredible clothing dupes, fake Yeezys, real leather Birkins, and more. Factory names coming up through posts are very common: you rely on other people’s experience buying reps and with their private agents to navigate your way.
This is important, because if you get scammed, you can’t do shit. You bought an illegal product from a stranger on WhatsApp, and the US government is going to tell you to get fucked.
Scams are incredibly common. It’s not uncommon for sellers to be moderators shilling their own products, or for subreddits to have “Trusted Seller” lists that are full of fake people.
It’s important to check reviews if you’re sourcing your product from an online store instead of a major factory’s catalogue. It’s all a trust game, and if you trust the wrong person — you have no recourse.
Sellers fake their reviews to look more real, and often are taken down by platforms like DHGate or TaoBao, only to restart new stores with the same images. They also often hide the logos related to the product: so, if you’re looking for a specific item, you have to go by shape and keywords.
The images posted online have the branding removed to avoid copyright filters, so you must confirm the presence of detailing through reviews or talking to the seller to ask for “brand” photos.
Once you place your order, it gets forwarded to an agent’s warehouse in China, or directly to you. Typically, if you’re buying higher quality replicas, you want an agent or a contact at the factory.
An agent takes a percent of the order, they communicate with the factory on your behalf, and fight for you. When an agent receives your package, they take out your items and take QC photos. If you buy directly, you will talk directly to the factory and receive QC images from them.
QC images are the lifeblood of the rep industry. They allow you to look at your items and discuss any changes you want, prior to getting the item shipped. This is your chance to see what you’re dropping a solid chunk of research and money on.
If your item passes the QC process, you have your next big issue: customs. It is illegal to send counterfeit goods through customs. Even worse, you are charged tax on your items based on their value.
If customs sees that you got a $30k Hermes bag at the cost of $450, they get suspicious that you’re committing fraud on the value of the item, or that you’re getting a replica. Both are illegal. Agents have tricks they use to bypass customs, which I will not share.
If customs ‘seizes’ your items, they are gone. End game. The weight of items is also incredibly important, and a big part of rep culture. Shipping is expensive, and the more items you can bundle into one — usually the better. Huge packages can also attract unwanted attention from customs — some people like to try to test the limits of the system.
Some higher-end agents and factories offer ‘insurance’, or will resend you items if they get seized. It seems to be built into the margins.
There’s a cultural game to show how big your reps are, and how many you got. The more modern and 1:1 your items are, the more you “win”. Replicas are partially about getting a cheaper product, but more about the cultural sense of evading brands but wanting to benefit from their work.
Some people in replicas are not even broke: they occasionally have “auths” (aka real items), or have a lot of disposable income. Some people just see it as better budgetary moves to pay for 1:1 replicas for $700 a bag as opposed to thousands, others like me see it as a ticket into a world we can’t enter, and others just want to fit in.
Either way — we want into the community, without the cost of entrance.
I would be remiss to not mention the pressure I feel to cosplay as rich. As the CTO of a startup, I know that sales is mostly about appearance as much as it is quality.
I walk around at conferences trying to sell software in my beat up mini Fjallraven Kanken that’s 7 years old and has duct tape on it to stop items from falling out of the hole in the bottom, while trying to convince men in Rolexes and suits more than my monthly salary to take me seriously.
People want to buy and do business with people who are like them: maybe if I buy fake luxury stuff, they won’t see how different we are.
Maybe I wanted a real Vivienne Westwood bag, or what I really wanted is a world where money is no longer an obstacle to desire. Where I can look like everyone who’s rich enough to afford really nice things, and maybe — even get them to accept me.
The link to consumerism as a way to ‘purchase’ acceptance is deeply reflected in Temu’s marketing and major success: one of their major slogans is “shop like a millionaire”. In the US, the delineation of income inequality and consumerism that fuels billionaires is inescapable right now. The replica community is a microcosm of it.
In a world where luxury fashion says “fuck you, poor people!”, knowingly purchasing replica items is a way to take back autonomy and claim a place within the luxury world, benefiting from the status game without letting them profit from it.
But, one moral win on a corrupt system doesn’t mean the system that replaces it is somehow morally better. The stealing rampant in replicas doesn’t stop there: Shein and other fast fashion brands steal from smaller fashion designers and crush them with massive distribution channels and cheap pricing. Replicas are not just a knife held to the throat of luxury fashion, but any fashion designer.
Fake replica jewelry has occasionally had lead in it, and has given people lead poisoning. People who put their hard-earned money into purses they think are real can find out they’re cheap replicas after getting scammed by a middle man.
So, even though my version of getting replica VW bags “feels” morally safe to me, it’s ignorant to imagine that everyone utilizes replicas as a way to blend in with rich people, benefiting from (but not contributing to) shitty behavior from luxury brands.
—
My 23rd birthday passed, and I got my fake Vivienne Westwood stuff.
My bags cost $130 all in, and I got three of them. Each of these bags would have cost $600+ each from the brand itself, if not more. All 3 of the replica bags I got used the same materials as the original bags.
I purchased a unnamed shoulder tote, a Betty bag, and a bucket bag. The bags came through a platform called DHGate where I bought directly from a seller. I didn’t get QC photos, and the items shipped directly from the 3rd party seller to me in about 2 months.
I ordered $150 in jewelry directly from a factory owner, who hand makes their jewelry by order. This one was a bit more involved: I went to their direct catalogue and placed an order, and then I PayPaled them the money, and WhatsApp-ed them details. They sent me QC photos, I accepted, and then got a package from someone in “California”.
Each item came with fake Vivienne Westwood packaging and tags, and if I didn’t know it was fake and wasn’t an expert — I don’t think any other average person would know either.
As I fell more into the ‘rep’ market, I fell more into Vivienne — the person behind the brand. What started as a way to avoid paying $900 for my dream bag from a brand fell into a hopeless connection with a role model I’ll never meet.
Vivienne was working class. She didn’t believe that she could make money in the arts, became a school teacher, and then divorced her first husband.
She then met the soon-to-be manager of the Sex Pistols, and started a clothing shop that dominated what we would come to know as the UK punk aesthetic. She then left punk after it became a common establishment and lost its core values, but she carried the spirit with her through her life.
Vivienne then fell into historical clothing, remaking corsets for the modern person to be form-fitting, yet not restricting. And she ended her life as a climate activist: telling people to stop buying consumerist goods and using her platform to advocate for climate change policy in the early 2010s.
She died 2 years ago, and I truly feel the world is lesser in her absence.
The brand “Vivienne Westwood” is under scrutiny — the jewelry I fell in love with is terrible quality for the price — made of brass or sterling silver.
The CEO of the brand is diverging from Vivienne’s final wishes, to the point where her granddaughter has left the company and disavowed what the brand has become, saying its’ operations do not benefit the charity structure it was set up to have.
Vivienne died unhappy about what her brand had become, and how it was operating under her name. But that being said: she would have been against replicas and the consumerism they promote. I personally bought items that were 1-to-1 materials, but the demand for reps is not nuanced — even if I am.
If the point of replicas is to benefit from expensive brands without paying the price, do I feel like I’ve “won”?
No.
Ethically, I feel I’ve done my “research” buying replica Vivienne Westwood jewelry and bags. But, my ethical consumption of something creates demand that cannot be divorced from its’ unethical counterpart. My items may be 1-to-1 materials, and will never be passed off as authentic items to someone who wants to buy them, but I can’t say that everyone else will abide by my moral code.
I went looking for fake bags to fast-track myself to acceptance, and instead found a woman who was beyond a whole world. Vivienne Westwood was a rare star in the sky of humanity, and I spent my time and effort ripping off her designs to get them for a cheaper price.
By thwarting the cost of designer goods, I’m still participating in consumerism and wanting to be seen as being associated with a brand. I won’t pay the price, but I want to be in the club.
Diving into replicas has taught me circumventing the system is not winning, because you’re still conforming with what the system wants from you — to see luxury items as high status, and that having access to a version of them is social capital that will make your life easier.
I still want to buy fake luxury items to be seen as someone who is “worth it”. Buying replicas means you still buy into what they’re truly selling — luxury brands sell belonging and status, not value.
You’re buying the feeling and appearance of not being broke — you’re, as Temu says, “shopping like a millionaire”.
If you’re still using a brand’s identity to establish status and find community, maybe you’re not winning as much as you think you are.
