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Fake Fashion

Tuesday, 13 September 2005

It’s no news that Bangkok has a counterfeit fashion problem…or did I say solution?

How do you like the sound of “Get your fill of Cartier to Channel at an 8th of the price!” Get ready for a high intensity inter-lingual haggle/battle with a calculator-wielding opponents to achieve that Shoppers-Rush that gives so many of us a will to wake up in the morning and feel like a someone.

D & G Belt

Lets face it, Bangkok is a fashion shoppers paradise, mainly because you can satiate your gluttonous need for a decadent fashion fix by gorging on pirated designer brand products. Forged fashion at discount dollars is rampant in our streets and shopping centers. However, since Dr. Thaksin has gone out of his way to steamroll forgeries out of our society, you might need a few hot tips to get your cut of the trade in devilish street value glamour.

Louis Vuitton Sweatband

Counterfeiting is a multibillion-dollar industry, which recently can account for 5 to 7 percent of global trade per year. In unpaid taxes alone, each year costs our government billions of baht. Obviously players take the risk because there is a considerable profit at stake.

Dolce and Gabbana Belt

Demand for the goods has risen at a staggering rate of 40% per annum regardless of the cost of manufacturing being marked-up of more than 8,000 percent by the time it reaches that guy who sells it to you out of garbage bag in some dark part of Pat Pong or MBK. Its a nefarious business!

Gucci Umbrella

While Korea leads the way in manufacturing of Grade A & B fakes. Thailand plays strongly in an economy of scale by providing B & C forgeries. Very often this is the realm of branded components. For example Rolex will outsource an order for 150,000 outer-casing for its Oyster Perpetual model. The contracted factory might actually manufacture 200,000 and sell the over-stock to the black market. These authentic but unlicensed casings very often are then fitted with lesser quality inner-works and sold at C&D grade prices.

Louis Vuitton Slippers

You could buy a 1,500 Baht TAG-Heur Monaco in Bangkok to make you look flash. It may actually last you 6 months to a year before exploding on your wrist. Optionally you could buy the same watch in Shibuya for 25,000 YEN and it comes entirely from the original manufacturing supply chain as the fully licensed products. Its quality is so good that even TAG employees themselves won’t recognize the difference, till they look at its serial number. The growing availability of A&B grade fakes has created a currency of itself. Travelers pay for their entire vacations by returning to their home countries with 4 or 500$ of goods smuggled which they then flip to their friends at four times that prices. The friends still make a saving as compared to buying the original-official-licensed, but not better quality $10,000 timepiece.

The target client base for C&D fakes believes in ridiculous precepts such as these to justify their often gaudy illegal purchases:
“Real leather lasts too long you won’t have an excuse to buy another one as with vinyl Louis Vuitton. Where’s the shopper’s rush in that?”
“These togs are virtually disposable. I actually save money by throwing out my dirty designer laundry and replacing regularly with new purchases of more fakes.”
“What difference does one person buying a handful of products make to these huge fashion houses?”

“I’m actually am flattering the designer.”
“Who can tell the difference unless you look close up?” That’s true.
Usually, nobody can. But these days when I see someone slinking down a Bangkok vista, dripping with gold, emblazoned leather luggage, luxurious timepieces, the latest designer shades, well I figure you must be fakin’ it! Who cares? Grab that fist full of Baht and recite our dogma gleefully as you go out there and buy a real personality!
“Shop-Breathe-Shop!”

DIY Fake Idea
1.Carve a copy of your favorite brand’s logo onto a half potato.
2.Using your stylin’ color of paint, stamp the potato all over one of your bed-sheets.
3.Take the sheet to your tailor, ask them to make a shirt with it and presto! Instant designer glam!

by Brendan Jai

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