What idiot would buy the exact same bag they already owned for hundreds more?

I have my share of fakes, and at $30 a pop (if you’re paying more, haggle more ;) ), there is no way, even if I was a billionaire, that I would drop $1000 or more on the same purse. Or even a certain brand of purse. I once went to Saks Fifth Avenue and looked at a real Louis Vuitton to compare it with my fake (I left it in the car- I’m not a rube hehe) and the major difference was that the real bag was supple. My fake bag was also fraying in some places, but that was due to wear and tear. And think about it: You can get ~30 fakes for the price of one real bag. So even if the real purse is well made, you will probably get more mileage out off the collected 30 not-so-well-made bags than you would out of that one professionally made bag.

The two exceptions to this? I have real Coach shoes and real Juciy bags, but I never bought fake coach shoes and I bought a Juicy bag that was much smaller and a different style than the ones I bought later.

Just my two cents! Fake bags are about fun and style. You can’t take them too seriously, that’s why they’re so cheap!

I first go into how the music (and other) industry is getting it’s “Just Deserts” for when it became feasible to record, mass produce and sell Music, Movies, Images etc. 95% of all the “Artist” class went out of business almost overnight. The occupation of the “Bard” all but vanished. Now they complain they are losing money because a new technology “Steals” “Their” music? They cried crocodile tears when people stopped hiring musicians because it was cheaper to buy a phonograph than regularly hire musicians and therefore only a few of them got any work, and that of limited nature set at the terms of those that owned the means of production.

Having said that, I don’t encourage people to “Steal” music or movies, etc. And it’s not out of any fear of the RIAA either. I don’t know if they know it, but the “Stealing” is helping them.

A Bank Robber in his own way supports “The System” for he at least agrees with the banker the value of the money. The true radical tries to get people to switch currency or go back to barter.

The music industry and the other big monopolies must be destroyed. They stole the livelihood of the musician, the thespian, the artist and let only a few trained puppies have some pretense of wealth. And they turned “The voice”/”the Vision” into mild, bland, filtered garbage. The great stories are but ghosts, but many false stories replace them but offer only false ideals, impossible dreams, mindless sentiment.

The way to do it is to stop supporting them. Easy enough to do that in a recession, but that is only half the battle. Keep sharing their stuff, you help it stay popular.

What you need to do is seek out “Independent” acts where you pay them directly, as long as they are cool on “Sharing” (within reason) and “Fair Use”. For all the hype, all music, all acting, and in its own way art is “Busking”. But, that’s nothing to be ashamed of; If you toss $1 into the hat of a person playing a musical instrument on the street corner, you give them much more than they likely receive than if they were a “Pro” and you buy their $18.99 CD.

I’d rather see, getting back to the topic, these people selling the bags just provide good quality at 3rd world prices bags, not cutting a lot of quality corners to crudely imitate the ‘high fashion’. They can still look good, and be good quality. And the “High Fashion” makers will regret they ever fought “Copycats”.

The only pirated good I have ever purchased was a fake Movado off the street on my high-school class trip. Years later I bought an actual, though second-hand, one. I never would have chosen that watch if I hadn’t owned the fake.

I thought the point here is that the study answered that very question.

“So even if the real purse is well made, you will probably get more mileage out off the collected 30 not-so-well-made bags than you would out of that one professionally made bag.”

Beyond brands, plenty of people buy things for more because they’d rather just have one well-made item than 30. It’s often not even an issue of “mileage” but the fact is … who needs 30 bags? Where will I store them? If It’s 30 bags over 30 years, I’m a picky shopper, so I’d rather know I’d have something for years rather than *needing* to buy a new one soon down the road, since the process is such a long headache for me.

That all said, I’ve never really gotten the concept of fake v. real bags, or the allure of brand names alone. My favourite bag in the world is the most beautiful Italian leather made by a manufacturer I’ve never heard of.

And most people I know with fakes are pretty much the same way. You point out that the logo is off, and they will tell you things like “Well, this was ‘stripped’ because the company made too many and took the label off to maintain exclusivity, but someone rescued these before they were incinerated and had new logos designed for them”. It is odd how this whole market works.

Honestly, why? You buy these bags because of the image. The fact that they are exclusive and expensive means you buy into the belief that they are worthy of the attention, while at the same time subverting the system that you truly believe in. It makes no sense…and then when EVERYONE is doing the same, they get pissed off that everyone has the same knockoff, and buy a new one, repeating the cycle of excuses and lies.

Having said that, I do own some knockoffs…I don’t go for the realistic looking stuff, I go for the worst most gaudy crap possible…things that even the ignorant that buy them say DAMN THAT AIN’T REAL. On my trips to NYC, I’d make it a point to buy presents for friends and see if I could out do myself from the year before…that part is fun. I would NEVER spend $1000 on a time piece (I already have a $300 time piece that I carry in my pocket and read the internet on). I would never buy anything that purported to be authentic or even looked authentic…it is as greengestalt mentions, buying into the system. And this also allows me to pick out the idiots when they go out of their way to point out these are not real…as if it matters (it is always brought up that a real rolex’s second hand sweeps 8 times a second, not just once, for that smooth quality feel…wait? You had to look at that as opposed to the fact that the logo says ROLANX and there is a malformed logo on the band that has nothing to do with the brand???)

Sometimes fakes are fun, but only if they are obvious and don’t really purport themselves to be real. It is like its fun to use Linux with a GUI, but if you want a real graphic operating system only an idiot or a hipster would use anything but a Mac :-)

It has nothing to do with the exact price and how close the fakes are to the originals…

(I know that it’s grade-school logic, but ignore that for now.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law