Quality Over Quantity: The Counterfeit Bag That Changed How I Thought About Luxury
When I used to live in New York City in my mid-20s, one of my favorite things to do when I had free time was go to Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. Canal Street is widely seen as the main artery of New York City’s historic Chinatown. There are lots of restaurants with amazing food and shops that sold touristy knickknacks. But the main reason I liked going there was to look at all the fake designer bags and accessories that I could actually afford on a student’s budget.
Even if I couldn’t afford the real thing, browsing the “fakes” was aspirational for me and motivated me to do well in school so that one day I could afford the real deal. Because selling fake or counterfeit items is technically a crime, sometimes I would find myself in a hidden back room of a shop or in a difficult-to-find sweatshop on the third floor of a nondescript building in order to browse the latest fashionable “dupes” available at the time.
Many people don’t know that the quality of counterfeit goods is actually on a sliding scale. You can have the obviously fake “Rolox” watches to Louis Vuitton purses that look so authentic, even an LV sales associate couldn’t tell the difference.
Even back then, I knew buying counterfeit designer wares was “shady” and often funded horrible illegal activities like illicit drug dealing and even human trafficking. Despite my reservations, I justified it to myself based on the price point and my status as a broke, struggling student.
I remember one of the first counterfeit designer items I acquired was a mid-quality Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami cherry blossom Papillon purse. I had a friend who bought the real thing for around $800 at the time, but the fake one I had was only $20 and from afar it could pass for authentic if you didn’t examine it too closely.
I wore that bag with pride in my heyday, despite it falling apart after a few uses. The quality of the canvas was obviously subpar, but the real fatal defect was the stitching. If you stuffed your bag with items like I did, the stitching of the purse handles could not accommodate the weight, and often the straps would break.
The good news was I only spent $20 on it and could just replace it with a newer style. The bad news was I loved that specific print, which was only produced for a limited time and for a specific season.
I remember thinking, even if I have to buy 10 fakes of that purse, it would still be a better bargain than buying one authentic one based on the price point alone. Back then, as a young single woman living in NYC, I tended to prefer quantity over quality because I didn’t know any better.
I remember seeing my friend use her authentic bag for years, and despite what she put in it, it was so well designed and constructed that it never broke. If anything, the purse’s vachetta would patina and darken over time and would make it even more beautiful.
I told myself that once I “made it,” I would only buy authentic luxury goods because when you love something as much as I loved that purse, you want it to last forever. You want to take care of it and pass it on to your kids like a treasured inheritance.
Even though I’m older now and have substantially more money and resources at my disposal, I still live by the credo of quality > quantity.
