For Fake's Sake

Don’t get me wrong. I am only too aware that most of us cannot justify spending £700+ on a new ‘IT’ bag. I can fully appreciate that the temptation of paying £30 on a high street knock-off seems a far more appealing option, especially when pay day seems light years and many moons away. I am an understanding person. What I fail to fathom, however, is how a CHARITY, canvas shopper is being ripped-off and sold by money-grabbing goons on Oxford Street FOR THE SAME PRICE AS THE ORIGINAL!

Anya Hindmarch’s “Not a Plastic Bag” canvas shopper was an overnight phenomenon. People queued for hours at their local Sainsburys to get their hands on a designer name handbag for a fraction of the normal price (Hindmarch’s bags often hover around the £300 mark. This one was £5). It was a nice bag. People carried it with pride, the negativity of the initial media frenzy was happily overridden by the fact that the majority of the proceeds would go to charity. Nice. The only people who benefit from this, lets face it, pretty rubbish copy are those with little or no fashion sense and the people with scant moral values selling them. Who even wants this bag anymore? The bag’s cool factor was associated with the fact that it was a piece of designer luxury at low cost. The ones being sold now are terrible quality at the same cost. Baffling.

Another theme is raised from this subject: if you want a designer handbag at a discounted price, how can you be sure that you are getting the real thing? There are naturally well-respected websites (we know who they are, I won’t preach to the converted). They would not want to risk their reputations by selling fakes to unsuspecting online shoppers. Sites that offer products sold by the public (like E-bay for example) are a far dicier animal. The only way you can be 100% sure that you are buying a real Chloe Paddington is to go directly to the store or to a well-respected website or a department store and pay the full whack when you get there. Yikes.