knockoff

Are Your UGGs Fake? A 'Made in Australia' Tag Means YES

Filed under: Shoes

Even if you consider yourself a savvy shopper capable of spotting a fake a mile away you might want to double-check your favorite UGGs, some of the counterfeits up for sale lately are more than a little convincing.

The tricky part is that the latest UGG knock-offs aren't made of chintzy materials or with poor technique -- they actually have some quality behind them. Both boots pictured here are made of quality sheepskin with reinforced seams. They're both heavy, comfortable, and substantial boots. The only obvious difference is in the logo -- the overly large one on right marks the black boot as the imposter.

So how to tell if you've got the genuine article or have been duped with a knockoff? Besides the logo we've got four other telltale signs to look for in the gallery below, courtesy of the WSJ.

Gallery: UGGs: Genuine or Knock-Offs? How to Tell the Difference

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Tags: counterfeit, fake, knockoff, uggs

Economy Spurs Knock-Offs of Lesser Known Brands

by Rigel Celeste (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Handbags

First the shoppers, then the retailers, and now the counterfeiters. It's official: the recession really is affecting everybody. The economic downturn hasn't exactly hurt the multi-billion dollar knock-off industry but what it has done is change the way counterfeiters do business. The usual victims, high-end retailers like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Coach, are being replaced by less expensive luxury brands like Samantha Thavasa, Anya Hindmarch, and Kooba. Smaller labels are appealing to counterfeiters for many reasons: they're easier to sell online, can often be priced higher, and because the designers run smaller operations they're less likely to trigger a lawsuit. One of the most common new tricks is to offer brand name bags at fairly small discounts, i.e. $190 for a $250 bag, on small but well-designed websites. The result is unwitting consumers who think they've found a good bargain on a genuine article and buy, often being none the wiser until it's too late.

Unfortunately there's not a lot that can be done as there will always be crooks out there looking to make a buck (and the internet is notoriously difficult to patrol) so your best bet is to always buy from reputable retailers you trust and to remember: if that bargain looks too good to be true it probably is.

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Tags: counterfeit, economy, fake, knockoff, news, recession

Can The Right Attitude Help You Pull Off A Fake?

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Handbags

A few days ago my colleague Rigel Celeste wrote an interesting story about what your handbag says about you. In the story she posited that "carrying a knock-off bag can say that you're putting a fake front to the world." According to an intriguing story on Bloomberg, a study done by Renee Richardson Gosline, an assistant professor of marketing at MIT's Sloan School of Management, showed that if you want to get away with wearing a fake you need to have a certain attitude. Her research revealed that people are more likely to peg a handbag as being a real designer bag if the woman carrying it is wearing expensive clothes or has an aura of wealth.

Her methodology involved showing 100 owners of luxury handbags photos of bags alone and photos of bags worn by people in social settings. The study subjects were more able to ascertain an item's authenticity and potential cost of the item when it was in context. Gosline, who also happens to be a former brand manager for LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, found that even a nice fake won't fool many consumers if the rest of the package doesn't match up. I would suggest that a similar principle is often in effect with jewelry. A costume piece can appear more or less authentic depending on the person wearing it. Individual pieces of a person's wardrobe seen in context can elicit very different reactions from observers.

Gosline's research also showed that people are willing to pay twice as much for an item that they think will impress others and can be used to trumpet wealth and status. In another study she found that many purchasers who buy knock-off bags later gone on to buy real ones. Quoted in the Bloomberg article she says that the counterfeit served as a "placebo for brand attachment" leading people to become attached to a certain brand even though they never actually owned it.

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Tags: brands, counterfeit, fake, handbags, knockoff, luxury

Can You Spot the Knock-off?

by Rigel Celeste (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Handbags

How well do you think you know designer handbags? We've all seen obviously bad knock-offs, but imitators are getting better and better every day and the good ones are making products that are all but impossible to tell from the originals sometimes. Here's a fun quiz from Portfolio.com that puts your fashion sense to the ultimate test of side-by-side comparisons of brand name goods. Handbags, jeans, and even designer ball caps are included -- take the quiz and let us know how you do. I got a better score than I expected, but I think it was mostly luck!

Via A Luxury Travel Blog

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Tags: designer, designers, fake, faux, handbag, handbags, imitation, imitations, knock off, knock offs, KnockOff, KnockOffs, quiz