Selling the dream

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Eugene Rabkin, editor of StyleZeitgeist Magazine, on the enduring power of luxury status symbols.

On a panel in 2008, former Gucci designer Tom Ford admitted that “nothing made [him] happier” than seeing copies of his designs in the wild. “That meant you did the right thing,” he said. On the catwalk, imitation, appropriation, and homage are acceptable forms of flattery, a nod to a designer or collection of yore. There have been multiple instances of celebrated designers like Miuccia Prada and Nicholas Ghesquiere (then at Balenciaga and now at Louis Vuitton) knocking off other people’s work to a tee.

Off the catwalk, counterfeit goods—or “dupes,” as TikTokers like to call them—are of grave concern to the luxury fashion industry. Conglomerates have long sounded the alarm on fakes. Various scary statistics have been cited, with billions of dollars in sales supposedly lost to counterfeiters. But few fashion executives are willing to admit, as Ford did, that “the counterfeit customer is not our customer.” The luxury consumer, so Ford implied, will never buy a fake simply by virtue of its inauthenticity. The person who buys the real thing exists in an entirely different market segment than the consumer who buys a knockoff.

It’s a rather obvious conclusion, but brands have rarely made such clear-cut distinctions about who they’re selling to. Doing so would alienate large swaths of the population who see these items as status symbols. It also assumes that all counterfeit customers were dissuaded from buying the real thing. Increasingly though, it’s become harder to tell what’s real or what’s fake—online and off.

American copyright law uniquely enables appropriation and, in most cases, blatant replication of design, since fashion is considered a manufacturing industry, not a creative one. (It does not permit improper replication of a trademark, such as a logo, or a clearly recognizable pattern, like a Burberry check.) Although law enforcement agencies and the industry’s own sleuths occasionally play a game of whack-a-mole with counterfeiters, the flow of fakes continues unabated. Since Covid restrictions ended, dupe sellers on New York’s Canal Street have been out in full force, offering fakes that look like sad copies of the originals. Much of this illicit activity, though, has largely moved online.

And while luxury brands have reined in their distaste for dupe buyers, executives have conflated suppliers themselves with human traffickers, drug dealers, and, after 9/11, even terrorists. (My request for comment to INTERPOL, an international police organization, went unanswered.) Luxury executives have long claimed that counterfeits kill creativity and hamper the bottom line, citing statistics from, for example, the Global Brand Counterfeiting Report, which estimated that brands lost $323 billion from online counterfeiting in 2017. However, the methodology of such reports is unclear. In reality, the risk of profit loss exists only if the consumer was perfectly capable of affording the luxury item in the first place. And while there is anecdotal evidence that such luxury customers do exist, I have not yet seen reports that address this question in any meaningful manner.

With the rise of superfakes, articles that resemble the original in quality and appearance, we’re forced to reconsider what exactly we are buying when we purchase luxury goods. Some are, of course, drawn to the impeccable craftsmanship of the items themselves: the tactile feel of high-end materials, the longevity of a well-made bag or a garment. But what most customers look for today is a status symbol. A fake Birkin can never compare to a real Birkin in terms of cultural cachet, which is why so many counterfeit buyers, even wealthy ones, fear being found out. “The only reason people are interested in buying cheaper versions of products splattered with luxury logos is because of the cultural currency and desirability of those brands,” says Dr. Johanna Blakley, the managing director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Given the opportunity, the majority of consumers with means will opt to buy the genuine article.

This cachet does not come only from the item itself. A luxury purchase comes with the experience of going into a store with an upscale interior, being pampered by the sales staff, and walking out with a branded shopping bag; all of this contributes to the positive psychological benefit of owning the real thing. We witnessed this two years ago when a swath of American middle-class consumers blew their stimulus checks on genuine luxury goods. In one regional Louis Vuitton store, the salespeople started calling an entry level LV bag, a “stimmie bag.”

Perhaps what luxury executives really fear is declining brand cachet. The spread of fakes might dissuade rich customers from buying luxury products. Naturally, the affluent don’t want their bags to be mistaken for or even associated with uncouth knockoffs. But considering pop culture’s mass interest in luxury, which has led to record-breaking profits for fashion houses, these concerns are likely overblown. (The uber rich are also very good at making their symbols a moving target when and if the middle class gets too close.)

We live in an era of turbo-charged conspicuous consumption. Pop culture revolves around an incessant parade of celebrities and social media starlets from rich families, who frequently flaunt head-to-toe designer outfits. It’s no surprise then that the proportion of young people buying fakes has increased markedly over the past several years. According to the EU Intellectual Property Office, 37 percent of European teens between 15 and 24 have bought a counterfeit in 2022, compared with only 14 percent in 2019. Young consumers have a more blasé attitude regarding fakes, according to the survey, but they care about “the importance of social influences.” In other words, young consumers feel pressure to own a branded luxury product, because the celebrities and influencers they admire do. It’s what our culture demands of them.

A Bain & Co report found that Gen Z consumers are buying their first luxury product five years before their millennial counterparts, with some buyers as young as fifteen. Perhaps we can place some blame on social media where most of the authenticity debate is centered. But the luxury fashion industry has also been a more-than-willing participant in the gargantuan growth of the influencer-fashion industrial complex. Brands have spent the past decade incessantly gifting and paying influencers to attend catwalk shows in far-flung locales. Young people have, as a result, been primed to see luxury items as symbols of personal success.

This constant inducement to keep up with the Joneses is compounded by an unprecedented sense of entitlement sold to young consumers. Fast fashion promised to democratize fashion, but it has only led to people feeling like they deserve, if not the real thing, then its close approximation. In such a culture, it’s no wonder that people are rushing to buy counterfeits, instead of acknowledging that perhaps not everyone is entitled to everything they want. Until we see such an attitude change, counterfeiting will endure.

The Dirt: The luxury fashion industry cannot both have its cake and eat it too.

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