12 ms·

Among a certain set, counterfeit luxury bags may be more popular real ones

74 points by wallflower 4y ago

aleksiy123 4y ago
Recently I started buying replica sunglasses. Work just like the real thing and a fraction of the price. Worth it especially for sunglasses that I have to replace every year. I'm thinking of trying to pick up some other accessories like belts next. One other interesting thing about reps is it feels like they provide the most utility to those who can afford but don't want to pay the full price. If you are a kid decked out in full designer gear, people will call you out. But if you mix and match with some real pieces, people will just assume they are all real.
- snek_case 4y ago
  I've never bought brand name sunglasses. I just don't feel comfortable spending hundreds on something that I could easily lose, scratch or break.
- pkulak 4y ago
  But why do they need to be replicas? What's wrong with generic sunglasses that look reasonable?
  - aleksiy123 4y ago
    Nothing, but generally reps have more interesting designs and look better. It all depends on what you like. And as this article touched on theres also the thrill of getting a bargain which shouldn't be underestimated.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Historically luxuries came from China. In fact Africans who were doing the selling during the Slave Trade generally insisted on the Asian fineries and dismissed the European products as distantly and vertically inferior. And they were generally pretty shrewd in the negotiation, they knew the immense worth of whom they were selling. Insisted on getting beautiful clothes out of the equation. And Pablo Neruda says, at one point, "Chinese hands and Mexicans hands are similar, incapable of making ugly things."
motohagiography 4y ago
There's a great description of why people buy these things by DeMesquita and Smith in their dictator's handbook, where instead of just conspicuous consumption, the status signal is more for political survival. The idea is that if you have a position, there are people who keep you there because you return rewards to them, and when you stop, they will find a way to replace you. Spending (arguably, sacrificing) money on status symbols indicates your ability to continue to deliver those rewards to your essential coalition. If you can sacrifice $100k on a handbag or a watch, you're probably doing well, but if you're still wearing it 18-24mos later, are you still doing as well? As an essential coalition member how can I trust you're still going to be able to deliver what I need so that I keep you there? If I am a prince, I can't tell you that I just made a deal with the americans for several billion in oil or give away details of what I do for the money I pay you because that's not strategic, but I can drop $50m on a new plane or make a splash at an art auction to demonstrate I'm still a going concern and your interests are secured. This isn't just ego, it is survival. It works at a small scale as well, where if you are a local gangster, you splash out on jewelry, bottle service, and car rims. If you're an i-banker, you keep up with the joneses with places in the hamptons, or if you have a family office, palm beach. Where it gets weird is in US politics, you don't spend money to signal, instead, you do illegal things with impunity to demonstrate power. It's cheaper, but also more dangerous. If you are in media, publicly lying to sustain narrative is a similar signal, which is why mainstream media personalities can seem so dim, but they're playing the same game. (Alternative media people haven't figured out there's a game at all.) In that theory, whether it's a birkin bag or bullshit, the status isn't the end itself, it's the political survival that the status enables that drives it. These fake bags are for people pretending to play a game they don't understand.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  I don't understand the political game. The rest makes sense to me, when explained like this.
- gowld 4y ago
  > These fake bags are for people pretending to play a game they don't understand. These fake bags are for people who play the game but can't afford to play with real bags.
secretsatan 4y ago
Throughout the day i have misread “Birkins” as “Birkinis” and have been simultaneously confused by the trend and also disinterested in actually reading the articles.
intsunny 4y ago
It is amazing how Reddit has replaced the words "counterfeit/knock offs/fakes" with "rep". Some examples: /r/repladies, /r/repsneakers, /r/reptime, /r/luxuryreps, etc etc etc At least the OG /r/fakeid guys had no pretense about what they were about.
gowld 4y ago
> “But if you’re working hard for your money, you don’t want to spend it on stupid stuff. In New York especially, wealthy people just have more interesting things to do with their money. They invest in crypto. They reinvest in their businesses. They invest in their children.” This just looks like vapid people being vapid and chasing this moment's fad.
greedo 4y ago
So I have an acquaintance who is a sneaker head, and they spend wayyyy too much money on shoes. For most sneaker heads, the Nike Air Jordan 1 is the ultimate pair to acquire. Old ones, new releases, they all sell for exorbitant amounts, and the games necessary to acquire them are legion. Or you can just go on StockX and pay the going rate. So the other day he sends me a pic of a pair of AJ1s that are the "banned" originals that the NBA told Jordan not to wear. They were in mint shape, and that's unusual in kicks because the glue binding the soles to the leather usually breaks down. Any foam padding usually breaks down too, so a pair from 1985 would look like crap. Yet these looked perfect. Now Nike re-releases AJ1s all the time. But they're not the same as the original, for a variety of reasons I won't get into. And people want the original style, or as close as possible to it. Turns out there's quite a few people crafting "new" AJ1s that look identical to the 1985 AJ1s. You can even buy them with authentic soles. These shoes are handcrafted with really well dyed leather, the correct stitching etc. They get the soles from buying beater kicks on eBay etc, or you can even send in your old shoes to have the soles re-used. I owned an original pair of AJ1s (not the banned version) from 1985, and there was only one detail that was overlooked. My friend didn't care, but it annoyed me that they had missed the detail. And then he told me how much the hand-crafted versions were selling for.... $800. This was back in the first part of the year, and now the prices are like $1250. The same companies will create bespoke editions for you, typically starting at $5K a pair.
grapeskin 4y ago
This was an interesting glimpse into a world I can’t even imagine. What do the costs for “real” luxury bags even go to? Some of them apparently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s enough for two artisan workers to collaborate on making a single bag a year, then rest in a comfortable lodge in the Swiss alps until they make a single bag next year. I can understand luxury car prices, to an extent. There’s engineering and material prices that surely can’t be cheap. I can’t understand a piece of cow hide going for the same price.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  I think you are paying for the store front, the personal shopping experience, the models showing off the goods on runways far away. Advertisement and branding. There are plenty of costs involved in luxury goods, not all of them goes towards material.
- alar44 4y ago
  Most luxury bags are a few grand tops, not 100s. I'm sure they exist but that's not the norm. That's like someone buying a custom made $10 million Ferrari. Very rare.
  - grapeskin 4y ago
    Looking up the subject, Birkins, I’m seeing them selling from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    - alar44 4y ago
      It's a tiny tiny part of the market. Think $500 million yacht. Yes they exist, but 99.9% of them don't cost that much.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      Almost a classic example of a Veblen good. The demand doesn't increase uniformly as the price increases, but they'd probably sell fewer if they cut the price in half. They've clearly found the sweet spot in the overall profitability curve, somewhere in the six-figure range.
nicolas_t 4y ago
> In New York especially, wealthy people just have more interesting things to do with their money. They invest in crypto. I'm not sure investing in glorified ponzi schemes qualifies as doing more interesting things in with their money. Some of the comments really read as a satire > “Imagine we were just spending all of our money on authentic handbags,” she says. “You would never grow your wealth that way, right? And then a bit above, one of the person interviewed spent 10,000 a year on replicas.
- spicymaki 4y ago
  > Some of the comments really read as a satire Hilarious! To me this illustrates when household wealth gets over a certain level most purchasing decisions become wasteful. Spending millions on NFTs come to mind. Could you imagine how many people could be helped for a fraction of that?
- vmception 4y ago
  JPOW is going to nuke this market too.
- panda88888 4y ago
  Well... a single real birkin (plus all the other purchases needed at the Hermes store before someone is "qualified" to buy a bag) easily exceeds 10k.
  - vlunkr 4y ago
    So what? Buying a real Birkin is a stupid status symbol, and so is spending the same amount on knock offs.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    I thought of this as an economics experiment. What does hobo washing cost? Basically taking a guy covered in filth, and do all the steps needed to get him the finest clothes in the country, at the most exclusive...no that's always a rip off, some reasonable version of that that isn't extortionate. So how many times do you have to buy an intermediate change clothes that lets you shop at the next place? There was a scene in Pretty Woman about this, Julia Roberts is unable to buy clothes at the nice place because she shows up dressed like a prostitute, so they have to work around that.
bambax 4y ago
> But if you’re working hard for your money, you don’t want to spend it on stupid stuff. And so, the reasoning goes, you want to spend it on less stupid stuff, such as fakes, because, for the same amount of money, you can own 10x more fakes than the real thing. But why do you need 10 fake Birkins? There is something profoundly sad about people who spend time buying stuff; it's even sadder when they argue that they're being clever because they buy cheap stuff, so they can buy more of it. They are, in effect, hoarders.
- hnbad 4y ago
  > for the same amount of money, you can own 10x more fakes than the real thing Or other things. Unless I missed the memo where they are paid in fake Birkin scrip that can only be exchanged for other fake Birkins.
- _uy6i 4y ago
  I think there is another element involved - there is the desire not to ripped off. Many luxury goods are aesthetically pleasing, but total rip offs. Take the ridiculous fad of designer shower sandals/slides, an adidas one costs $25-$35 [1] a Gucci one ~$400 [2] but both probably cost about $5. The point I’m making is if you want Gucci slides (for whatever reasons), and you’re galled by the markup, replicas would seem to “solve” your problem (putting aside all other problems it creates). [1]https://www.adidas.com/us/adilette-comfort-slides/GZ5892.html?pr=product_rr&slot=13&rec=mt https://www.adidas.com/us/adilette-comfort-slides/GZ5892.htm... [2]https://www.gucci.com/us/en/pr/men/shoes-for-men/slides-sandals-for-men/slides-for-men/mens-gg-slide-sandal-p-681880UKU001000 https://www.gucci.com/us/en/pr/men/shoes-for-men/slides-sand...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - blfr 4y ago
    The thing I don't understand about luxury goods is why people outsource their taste to these massive corporations like LVMH for so much money. For the price of an off the rack Armani or Prada suit you can have one custom tailored from a really good tailor. For the price of a LV purse, you can have five or more from a solid local artisan. Higher quality (or exactly the same because this is where these large manufacturers often order stuff), full customization, an actual professional to advise you but people choose a soulless megacorp logo instead.
aorth 4y ago
What the hell is a Birkin, why are there no pictures in the article, and why the hell is this on HN?
- alxlu 4y ago
  The picture under the byline before the article even begins is of a Birkin…
- adrianN 4y ago
  > The Birkin bag is a line of tote bag, introduced in 1984 by the French luxury goods maker Hermès. The Wikipedia also has pictures.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    More importantly, it's a symbol of conspicuous consumption: prices start at US$11,000. They're also famously impossible to procure unless you have connections, you can't just march into the nearest Hermes and buy one.
    - saiya-jin 4y ago
      Ah, the classic stupid rich folks management that european brands mastered long ago, ie Ferrari. FYI you can't buy V12 Ferrari outright, even if you want to pay 10x the official price. They will sell you some basic V8 model, and if you are happy and good customer, after few years, they can put you in the waiting list for something better. Theoretically you can skip the line by buying from somebody else, but as an owner you sign very detailed contract what you can and can't do (ie repaint), if you screw this one up you are banned from Ferrari forever (I think Justin Bieber ended up like that but don't know details). These days, it may not be V8 but V6, and V12 became some crazy hybrid with literally too much power to drive for normal people but the logic remains, and there is more clueless rich folks who want to impress.
      - wodenokoto 4y ago
        How does Ferrari rentals work? Sounds like the kind of thing Ferrari don't want their customers to do.
fxtentacle 4y ago
My impression after reading the article is that this is some sort of virtue signalling. "for many women in circles where social currency can be purchased, rep-buying has evolved into a kind of edgy declaration of identity" I'd summarize it as: Look at how smart I am, I can get all the benefits of fashion for a fraction of the money while sticking it to "the man" and big corporations. Most people agree that overpriced fashion stuff is bad => You gain virtue points by hating them. Most people are still affected/impressed by fashion => You gain virtue points by owning it. Most people agree that getting more for less shows that you are smart => You gain virtue points by buying fakes. And apparently, the risk involved is also attractive to bored people. "have shared terrifying disciplinary letters sent directly from fashion houses. They typically contain grand threats — prison terms, multimillion-dollar fines — and are intended to shock and awe the recipients"
jiggawatts 4y ago
Wow, you can see the price drop in real time. The chart was $0.274 when I opened it, and within a minute it ticked down to $0.2570!
- Thorrez 4y ago
  A Birkin for $0.2570? What a deal! I think you meant to comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336498 . Hmm, but https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terrausd/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terrausd/ says the low was $0.2998 . How does that make sense with what you saw?
elp 4y ago
I've now seen this story reported is so many places. My wife says she's also seen it on her social media. So either the entire world suddenly cares about knock off handbags or someone is spending a lot on PR. Is Hermes behind this? Its a clever idea. You know your brand is going to be copied so you might as well be the one doing it.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  > One posits that the fashion houses own the rep factories so they can monetize at every level This is a side plot in "House of Gucci". After Lady Gaga shuts down the street sales of knock-offs, Gucci loses a large portion of their income and it contributes to their financial woes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- darawk 4y ago
  That would be a brilliant form of price discrimination.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  I dunno, in Europe at least they are cracking down hard on "fake" products, mainly because the big brands see it as competition. Being caught with imitation products at e.g. customs in airports will get your imitations confiscated and you fined.
donthellbanme 4y ago
Mizza 4y ago
The male side of this coin is /r/RepTime, which is for watches. I don't get it but they look like they're having fun.
- gadders 4y ago
  There are others that do trainers if you need a rep of limited edition Yeezys or something.
gadders 4y ago
I first started looking at RepLadies a year or so ago when I was looking at buying a bag for my wife (I would tell her it was a rep of course). I never bought anything, but I do occasionally still check in on the subreddit. There is something about the way it is run, as if by a mixture of Reese Witherspoon from Legally Blonde and Kristin Davis from Sex in the City that makes it quite a fun read.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

74 points by wallflower 4y ago

Recently I started buying replica sunglasses. Work just like the real thing and a fraction of the price. Worth it especially for sunglasses that I have to replace every year. I'm thinking of trying to pick up some other accessories like belts next. One other interesting thing about reps is it feels like they provide the most utility to those who can afford but don't want to pay the full price. If you are a kid decked out in full designer gear, people will call you out. But if you mix and match with some real pieces, people will just assume they are all real.

snek_case 4y ago
I've never bought brand name sunglasses. I just don't feel comfortable spending hundreds on something that I could easily lose, scratch or break.
pkulak 4y ago
But why do they need to be replicas? What's wrong with generic sunglasses that look reasonable?
- aleksiy123 4y ago
  Nothing, but generally reps have more interesting designs and look better. It all depends on what you like. And as this article touched on theres also the thrill of getting a bargain which shouldn't be underestimated.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Historically luxuries came from China. In fact Africans who were doing the selling during the Slave Trade generally insisted on the Asian fineries and dismissed the European products as distantly and vertically inferior. And they were generally pretty shrewd in the negotiation, they knew the immense worth of whom they were selling. Insisted on getting beautiful clothes out of the equation. And Pablo Neruda says, at one point, "Chinese hands and Mexicans hands are similar, incapable of making ugly things."

motohagiography 4y ago

There's a great description of why people buy these things by DeMesquita and Smith in their dictator's handbook, where instead of just conspicuous consumption, the status signal is more for political survival. The idea is that if you have a position, there are people who keep you there because you return rewards to them, and when you stop, they will find a way to replace you. Spending (arguably, sacrificing) money on status symbols indicates your ability to continue to deliver those rewards to your essential coalition. If you can sacrifice $100k on a handbag or a watch, you're probably doing well, but if you're still wearing it 18-24mos later, are you still doing as well? As an essential coalition member how can I trust you're still going to be able to deliver what I need so that I keep you there? If I am a prince, I can't tell you that I just made a deal with the americans for several billion in oil or give away details of what I do for the money I pay you because that's not strategic, but I can drop $50m on a new plane or make a splash at an art auction to demonstrate I'm still a going concern and your interests are secured. This isn't just ego, it is survival. It works at a small scale as well, where if you are a local gangster, you splash out on jewelry, bottle service, and car rims. If you're an i-banker, you keep up with the joneses with places in the hamptons, or if you have a family office, palm beach. Where it gets weird is in US politics, you don't spend money to signal, instead, you do illegal things with impunity to demonstrate power. It's cheaper, but also more dangerous. If you are in media, publicly lying to sustain narrative is a similar signal, which is why mainstream media personalities can seem so dim, but they're playing the same game. (Alternative media people haven't figured out there's a game at all.) In that theory, whether it's a birkin bag or bullshit, the status isn't the end itself, it's the political survival that the status enables that drives it. These fake bags are for people pretending to play a game they don't understand.

wodenokoto 4y ago
I don't understand the political game. The rest makes sense to me, when explained like this.
gowld 4y ago
> These fake bags are for people pretending to play a game they don't understand. These fake bags are for people who play the game but can't afford to play with real bags.

secretsatan 4y ago

Throughout the day i have misread “Birkins” as “Birkinis” and have been simultaneously confused by the trend and also disinterested in actually reading the articles.

intsunny 4y ago

It is amazing how Reddit has replaced the words "counterfeit/knock offs/fakes" with "rep". Some examples: /r/repladies, /r/repsneakers, /r/reptime, /r/luxuryreps, etc etc etc At least the OG /r/fakeid guys had no pretense about what they were about.

gowld 4y ago

> “But if you’re working hard for your money, you don’t want to spend it on stupid stuff. In New York especially, wealthy people just have more interesting things to do with their money. They invest in crypto. They reinvest in their businesses. They invest in their children.” This just looks like vapid people being vapid and chasing this moment's fad.

greedo 4y ago

So I have an acquaintance who is a sneaker head, and they spend wayyyy too much money on shoes. For most sneaker heads, the Nike Air Jordan 1 is the ultimate pair to acquire. Old ones, new releases, they all sell for exorbitant amounts, and the games necessary to acquire them are legion. Or you can just go on StockX and pay the going rate. So the other day he sends me a pic of a pair of AJ1s that are the "banned" originals that the NBA told Jordan not to wear. They were in mint shape, and that's unusual in kicks because the glue binding the soles to the leather usually breaks down. Any foam padding usually breaks down too, so a pair from 1985 would look like crap. Yet these looked perfect. Now Nike re-releases AJ1s all the time. But they're not the same as the original, for a variety of reasons I won't get into. And people want the original style, or as close as possible to it. Turns out there's quite a few people crafting "new" AJ1s that look identical to the 1985 AJ1s. You can even buy them with authentic soles. These shoes are handcrafted with really well dyed leather, the correct stitching etc. They get the soles from buying beater kicks on eBay etc, or you can even send in your old shoes to have the soles re-used. I owned an original pair of AJ1s (not the banned version) from 1985, and there was only one detail that was overlooked. My friend didn't care, but it annoyed me that they had missed the detail. And then he told me how much the hand-crafted versions were selling for.... $800. This was back in the first part of the year, and now the prices are like $1250. The same companies will create bespoke editions for you, typically starting at $5K a pair.

grapeskin 4y ago

This was an interesting glimpse into a world I can’t even imagine. What do the costs for “real” luxury bags even go to? Some of them apparently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s enough for two artisan workers to collaborate on making a single bag a year, then rest in a comfortable lodge in the Swiss alps until they make a single bag next year. I can understand luxury car prices, to an extent. There’s engineering and material prices that surely can’t be cheap. I can’t understand a piece of cow hide going for the same price.

wodenokoto 4y ago
I think you are paying for the store front, the personal shopping experience, the models showing off the goods on runways far away. Advertisement and branding. There are plenty of costs involved in luxury goods, not all of them goes towards material.
alar44 4y ago
Most luxury bags are a few grand tops, not 100s. I'm sure they exist but that's not the norm. That's like someone buying a custom made $10 million Ferrari. Very rare.
- grapeskin 4y ago
  Looking up the subject, Birkins, I’m seeing them selling from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  - alar44 4y ago
    It's a tiny tiny part of the market. Think $500 million yacht. Yes they exist, but 99.9% of them don't cost that much.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Almost a classic example of a Veblen good. The demand doesn't increase uniformly as the price increases, but they'd probably sell fewer if they cut the price in half. They've clearly found the sweet spot in the overall profitability curve, somewhere in the six-figure range.

nicolas_t 4y ago

> In New York especially, wealthy people just have more interesting things to do with their money. They invest in crypto. I'm not sure investing in glorified ponzi schemes qualifies as doing more interesting things in with their money. Some of the comments really read as a satire > “Imagine we were just spending all of our money on authentic handbags,” she says. “You would never grow your wealth that way, right? And then a bit above, one of the person interviewed spent 10,000 a year on replicas.

spicymaki 4y ago
> Some of the comments really read as a satire Hilarious! To me this illustrates when household wealth gets over a certain level most purchasing decisions become wasteful. Spending millions on NFTs come to mind. Could you imagine how many people could be helped for a fraction of that?
vmception 4y ago
JPOW is going to nuke this market too.
panda88888 4y ago
Well... a single real birkin (plus all the other purchases needed at the Hermes store before someone is "qualified" to buy a bag) easily exceeds 10k.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  So what? Buying a real Birkin is a stupid status symbol, and so is spending the same amount on knock offs.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  I thought of this as an economics experiment. What does hobo washing cost? Basically taking a guy covered in filth, and do all the steps needed to get him the finest clothes in the country, at the most exclusive...no that's always a rip off, some reasonable version of that that isn't extortionate. So how many times do you have to buy an intermediate change clothes that lets you shop at the next place? There was a scene in Pretty Woman about this, Julia Roberts is unable to buy clothes at the nice place because she shows up dressed like a prostitute, so they have to work around that.

bambax 4y ago

> But if you’re working hard for your money, you don’t want to spend it on stupid stuff. And so, the reasoning goes, you want to spend it on less stupid stuff, such as fakes, because, for the same amount of money, you can own 10x more fakes than the real thing. But why do you need 10 fake Birkins? There is something profoundly sad about people who spend time buying stuff; it's even sadder when they argue that they're being clever because they buy cheap stuff, so they can buy more of it. They are, in effect, hoarders.

hnbad 4y ago
> for the same amount of money, you can own 10x more fakes than the real thing Or other things. Unless I missed the memo where they are paid in fake Birkin scrip that can only be exchanged for other fake Birkins.
_uy6i 4y ago
I think there is another element involved - there is the desire not to ripped off. Many luxury goods are aesthetically pleasing, but total rip offs. Take the ridiculous fad of designer shower sandals/slides, an adidas one costs $25-$35 [1] a Gucci one ~$400 [2] but both probably cost about $5. The point I’m making is if you want Gucci slides (for whatever reasons), and you’re galled by the markup, replicas would seem to “solve” your problem (putting aside all other problems it creates). [1]https://www.adidas.com/us/adilette-comfort-slides/GZ5892.html?pr=product_rr&slot=13&rec=mt https://www.adidas.com/us/adilette-comfort-slides/GZ5892.htm... [2]https://www.gucci.com/us/en/pr/men/shoes-for-men/slides-sandals-for-men/slides-for-men/mens-gg-slide-sandal-p-681880UKU001000 https://www.gucci.com/us/en/pr/men/shoes-for-men/slides-sand...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- blfr 4y ago
  The thing I don't understand about luxury goods is why people outsource their taste to these massive corporations like LVMH for so much money. For the price of an off the rack Armani or Prada suit you can have one custom tailored from a really good tailor. For the price of a LV purse, you can have five or more from a solid local artisan. Higher quality (or exactly the same because this is where these large manufacturers often order stuff), full customization, an actual professional to advise you but people choose a soulless megacorp logo instead.

aorth 4y ago

What the hell is a Birkin, why are there no pictures in the article, and why the hell is this on HN?

alxlu 4y ago
The picture under the byline before the article even begins is of a Birkin…
adrianN 4y ago
> The Birkin bag is a line of tote bag, introduced in 1984 by the French luxury goods maker Hermès. The Wikipedia also has pictures.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  More importantly, it's a symbol of conspicuous consumption: prices start at US$11,000. They're also famously impossible to procure unless you have connections, you can't just march into the nearest Hermes and buy one.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Ah, the classic stupid rich folks management that european brands mastered long ago, ie Ferrari. FYI you can't buy V12 Ferrari outright, even if you want to pay 10x the official price. They will sell you some basic V8 model, and if you are happy and good customer, after few years, they can put you in the waiting list for something better. Theoretically you can skip the line by buying from somebody else, but as an owner you sign very detailed contract what you can and can't do (ie repaint), if you screw this one up you are banned from Ferrari forever (I think Justin Bieber ended up like that but don't know details). These days, it may not be V8 but V6, and V12 became some crazy hybrid with literally too much power to drive for normal people but the logic remains, and there is more clueless rich folks who want to impress.
    - wodenokoto 4y ago
      How does Ferrari rentals work? Sounds like the kind of thing Ferrari don't want their customers to do.

fxtentacle 4y ago

My impression after reading the article is that this is some sort of virtue signalling. "for many women in circles where social currency can be purchased, rep-buying has evolved into a kind of edgy declaration of identity" I'd summarize it as: Look at how smart I am, I can get all the benefits of fashion for a fraction of the money while sticking it to "the man" and big corporations. Most people agree that overpriced fashion stuff is bad => You gain virtue points by hating them. Most people are still affected/impressed by fashion => You gain virtue points by owning it. Most people agree that getting more for less shows that you are smart => You gain virtue points by buying fakes. And apparently, the risk involved is also attractive to bored people. "have shared terrifying disciplinary letters sent directly from fashion houses. They typically contain grand threats — prison terms, multimillion-dollar fines — and are intended to shock and awe the recipients"

jiggawatts 4y ago

Wow, you can see the price drop in real time. The chart was $0.274 when I opened it, and within a minute it ticked down to $0.2570!

Thorrez 4y ago
A Birkin for $0.2570? What a deal! I think you meant to comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31336498 . Hmm, but https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terrausd/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terrausd/ says the low was $0.2998 . How does that make sense with what you saw?

elp 4y ago

I've now seen this story reported is so many places. My wife says she's also seen it on her social media. So either the entire world suddenly cares about knock off handbags or someone is spending a lot on PR. Is Hermes behind this? Its a clever idea. You know your brand is going to be copied so you might as well be the one doing it.

wodenokoto 4y ago
> One posits that the fashion houses own the rep factories so they can monetize at every level This is a side plot in "House of Gucci". After Lady Gaga shuts down the street sales of knock-offs, Gucci loses a large portion of their income and it contributes to their financial woes.
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darawk 4y ago
That would be a brilliant form of price discrimination.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I dunno, in Europe at least they are cracking down hard on "fake" products, mainly because the big brands see it as competition. Being caught with imitation products at e.g. customs in airports will get your imitations confiscated and you fined.

donthellbanme 4y ago

Mizza 4y ago

The male side of this coin is /r/RepTime, which is for watches. I don't get it but they look like they're having fun.

gadders 4y ago
There are others that do trainers if you need a rep of limited edition Yeezys or something.

gadders 4y ago

I first started looking at RepLadies a year or so ago when I was looking at buying a bag for my wife (I would tell her it was a rep of course). I never bought anything, but I do occasionally still check in on the subreddit. There is something about the way it is run, as if by a mixture of Reese Witherspoon from Legally Blonde and Kristin Davis from Sex in the City that makes it quite a fun read.

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