Faking It

Orgasms, British accents, smiles – people fake a lot of different things in life. Sometimes certain situations merit a little faking here and there, but for the most part faking is usually regarded as a bad thing. Especially in the world of fashion.
The allure of purchasing a counterfeit fashion good is undeniable. By their very nature, objects produced by high fashion companies are expensive, and finding authentic pieces at a discount is nearly impossible. Companies like Louis Vuitton establish their image by guaranteeing that their items never go on sale, so what’s a fashionista with a strict budget supposed to do? Turning to a world of knockoffs seems like a reasonable option. After all, big cities like New York are chock-full of places to purchase knockoffs and sometimes the replicas are indistinguishable from their authentic counterparts, sold on Madison Avenue for ten to twenty times the price. Clearly, you’d be an idiot NOT to take advantage of these cheaper alternatives!
Sadly, this isn't the case. In a world where customers are hooked on bargains, consumers are increasingly more intent on owning status symbols for a fraction of the cost, meaning they are more willing to purchase fakes to satisfy that craving. While buying the occasional counterfeit Versace wallet or Prada handbag might not seem like a devastation to the entire fashion industry, the World Customs Organization states that the fashion industry loses up to $9.7 billion dollars every year to counterfeiting. Louis Vuitton handbags, whose canvases are emblazoned with the noticeable and familiar LV monogram, have become the most relentlessly knocked-off bags in fashion history, with reportedly only 1% of purses in circulation being authentic. Some people assume that this widespread copying is a form of flattery, but the brands certainly do not. Giorgio Armani, who has been having trouble trying to eliminate the sale of knockoffs in China, admits that having his brand counterfeited “is flattering, because it means that you are doing the right thing,” but also proclaims that “it is a problem, and something is going to be done.”
The something to which Armani is referring is litigation. Brands like Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton have taken matters into their own hands by employing private investigators to find where knockoffs of their brands are being sold, then suing the dealers. A good example is the recent LVHM and Christian Dior Couture (segment of Dior not owned by LVMH) suit filed against ebay.fr in 2006 for “not doing enough to fight the problem of counterfeit items on the site.” Using their tremendous financial power, the brands usually defeat unlicensed retailers of counterfeit goods in court, however the process is arduous and time consuming, and ultimately fashion companies can only deal with a small fraction of illegal activity.
Perhaps you don’t feel bad taking a little money from the big-time fashion corporations. After all, they comprise a multi-billion dollar industry, and tycoons like Bernard Arnault (chairman of LVMH and the richest man in France) certainly need the money less than you do. Well, part of the reason that the real goods are so expensive is because of the conditions in which they are produced. The majority of luxury products are produced in the United States, Italy, and France, where working conditions are strictly monitored and employees are provided with a variety of benefits. Items produced on the black market (often in factories in developing nations like China, Vietnam, and Thailand) on the other hand, are not monitored and therefore workers are not guaranteed anything. Laborers are often forced to work in sweatshops, characterized by unsafe conditions, long hours (not 50 hours a week long - long, like 90 hours a week long) and child labor, sometimes by kids as young as 8 years old. Furthermore, the profits made by counterfeiters rarely see their way back to the workers, but more often fund more illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and terrorism.
Lastly, there is the social stigma surrounding these products. The quality of knockoffs is often shoddy at best, with glue holding the seams together instead of thread, zippers that don’t easily close, and “leather” that sweats and wears out quickly. Often, your money is better spent on a quality, non-brand name bag sold at a legitimate retailer than on a fake. After all, think about why you want to buy a black Chanel leather handbag over a nondescript black leather handbag sold at JC Penny. Quality? Sure. Style? Perhaps. Status? Now that’s the one. And by buying a fake, you are faking that status. You’re pretending to be totting a $1,000 dollar handbag, when you maybe spent $50. In Sex in the City, Carrie Bradshaw goes with Samantha to buy a fake Fendi bag in LA, but upon seeing the bags, she decides against it. She narrates, "I should have liked them. But staring into that trunk, they no longer looked like elegant Fendi bags, they just looked cheap. And even if everyone else thought it was real, I’d always know my bag came from a cardboard box in a trunk deep in the valley. [At least when you] wait for the real thing, you know it’s one of a kind and special or something." So what does it mean when you care about status so much that you would buy a cheap, poorly-made, and morally questionable item? Well, it means that your designer brand-name obsession has gone much too far.

A Very Furry Dilemma

One of my earliest memories is of my parents, my sister, and I going Christmas shopping in Union Square in San Francisco. The Christmas tree was up, lights hung on the trees and lamp posts outside, and all the department stores had the most beautiful winter displays, brightly lit in the front windows. Also in front of the stores however, especially in front of Neiman Marcus, were PETA protestors, waving signs with pictures of bloody animals trapped in cages, who were shouting at customers not to patronize stores that sell fur. At the time, my young idealism was fully intact, and I would often go up to the protestors to take a flier. I remember my mom grabbing my hand once and whispering in my ear, “Just keep walking, sometimes they throw blood on people!” This fact startled me and seemed unusually cruel to do at Christmastime, but nonetheless, these people were advocating for cute, furry animals who could not advocate for themselves and that made them alright with me. I was totally on their side.
Flash forward 15 years, I am shopping in Neiman Marcus with a friend. I’ve come down with a severe case of fashion fever which has not let up for three years now, and Neiman’s is now a mecca of all things holy and good. I walked straight up to one of the fur coats and felt it, commenting on how soft it was. A saleswoman approached me, smiled and said, “My, you have good taste. That is one of our finest Sable coats. The absolute best.” I glanced at the price tag – $45,000. I believed her. “It is extraordinary,” I said, “It’s a pity I don’t have a pile of money just laying around.”
As I walked out of the store, I couldn’t help but think how disappointed ‘young me’ would have been to watch ‘modern me’ chatting with a sales woman while caressing a dead animal. This controversy over fur is still being contemplated delicately in my mind, but in the outside world it’s more of a raging battle between PETA and its supporters and the International Fur Federation and the fashion houses using their product.
To quote an IFF advertisement in WWD, “unanimity may be in short supply among world leaders these days, but there’s virtually no disagreement among the world’s top designers when it comes to fur. In short, the consensus is that fur is fabulous.” Last season, many designers opted to use fur in their collections, including Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Fendi, and Armani. Armani even took some heat from PETA, because he promised to abstain from using fur in his collections after the organization presented him with “the facts.” Although he called his decision ‘limiting,’ he said that he would abide by his promise. When the Armani Privé collection showed, however, the collection “included fur-trimmed skirts and coats, as well as jackets and even snowsuits for toddlers trimmed with rabbit fur,” according to a PETA ad (aptly captioned Pinocchio Armani). The organization then begged that celebrities attending the Oscars leave their Armani at home for the big night. Ultimately though, fashion designers keep going back to fur, calling it a “versatile and timeless” material, which has been used in the creation of clothing for hundred of years. So why not keep using it?
Many fashion houses such as Gucci and Fendi say they will indeed keep fur as an integral part of their collections, but many designers, such as Ralph Lauren and Stella McCartney, have shunned its use altogether. They have seen pictures of the cruelty and violence which takes place in the “fur farms” where mink and foxes are raised only to be electrocuted or drown so that their precious furs stay intact for a much longer life on the back of some wealthy socialite. Stella McCarteny goes even further and refuses to use leather as well (stated in her contract) and she even narrated a PETA video exposé about a United States fur farm. Model Janice Dickinson (who is said to be a little “old school” in her ideas about size and beauty) also got behind the anti-fur movement, leading a PETA campaign whose slogan read, “I’d rather go naked than wear fur.” It seems that rejecting fur isn’t unfashionable after all.
Ultimately, whether to wear fur or not boils down to a personal choice. Some find it to be the epitome of decadence and glamour; others find it repulsive, unnecessary and brutal. Some people, like myself, are stuck somewhere in between. And it’s hard to avoid hypocrisy. Charlize Theron came out with an anti-fur ad for PETA, and then became the new spokesmodel for a Dior campaign, a fashion house which used fur in its last collections. I present this example not to pick on Charlize, but simply to emphasize the fact that we can all find ourselves on different parts of the moral spectrum for different issues, and that for some of us, fur is just another one of those gray areas.

Understanding Fashion Controversies: The Marc Jacobs Case Study

According to a 2004 article entitled Ethics of the Fashion Industry, “politics and fashion have never been a trendy mix”. Formerly, designers and fashion companies with strong messages about “global welfare” were most often considered unappealing to the masses. Fashion has always been an industry obsessed with mass marketing and appealing to the largest amount of [wealthy] customers they can, so why "stir the pot", and risk offending potential clients who would have otherwise made a purchase? I can’t think of anyone more suited to answer this question than Marc Jacobs, creative director of Louis Vuitton and his own Marc Jacobs brand. Since I am not personally friends with Marc Jacobs, I will have to walk you through his affinity for fashion controversy myself.
Let’s start with the Louis Vuitton Monogram Joke bags, created in late 2007. These bags were created when Marc teamed up with Richard Prince, American painter and photographer, who created a line of “joke” themed paintings in the 80’s. It was these joke paintings that fueled the inspiration for a new, colorful twist on the monogram print created by the Paris Fashion House 112 years ago. The only perceived problem with the bags is the text sprawled across them. Jokes like “Every time I meet a woman who can cook like my Mother....She looks like my Father” and “My wife went to the beauty shop and got a mud pack. For two days she looked beautiful. Then the mud fell off” adorn all of the bags, and unsurprisingly, many people hate them. On Bagsnob.com, a reviewer wrote that the jokes were “lame ass jokes your 80 year old sexist uncle tells” and many commentators on the site backed up the review saying:

“The biggest joke of all is the LV label. Is there no concern for devaluing the brand?”

“What woman on this planet would want to be seen with this bag? For me, this is in the same category of offensive as that swastika bag.”

“I think Marc left rehab more messed up than he was before. This line is becoming a joke (no pun intended).”

But the controversy doesn’t just stop there. In mid-2008, just in time for gay pride parades across the globe, Jacobs released the "Rebel Pride" shirt, designed by Jon Lynn. The shirt had many elements typical of gay pride: stars and rainbow flags. The caveat- it was superimposed on the confederate flag, an image displayed with prominence in the South during the Civil War. As a result, the confederate flag is deeply associated with racism, intolerance, and the United States' very own bible-belt. Not exactly what gay pride is all about, is it? Commentators on Out.com said:

“I think it's more for the shock-value than anything else. I mean, if the meaning behind it is so elusive then what's the point?”

“I'm from and live in the Deep South and will always consider the confederate flag offensive. I can only imagine how hurtful it must be for black people.”

It seems risky to offend both women and the gay community, two HUGE consumers of high fashion. So why not take the advice “Ethics of the Fashion Industry” has to offer and avoid alienating your biggest clients? Let me try to explain what I see in both the bags and the t-shirt (I think they’re both great).
I think that sexism and homophobia are both serious issues facing American society, but I also believe avoiding discussion of the subjects all together is the WORST possible way to deal with them. Keeping divisive issues like this secret and taboo ensure their long-lasting persistence within a culture. Marc Jacobs forces us to consider issues like sexism by placing them out in the open for all to see and discuss (and check out the blogosphere- they have been discussed plenty!).
I think women brave enough to carry the Monogram Joke bag are the same women that are strong enough to stand up to men and assert their individuality. The bag is being carried by women who are literally saying to the world, “I have a handle on sexism; I use it to carry my makeup”. And gay men and women sporting the “Rebel Pride” t-shirt are saying, “I can cover up a symbol of racism with one of acceptance”, a message revered by the gay, and various other minority communities. To end, I want to clarify that I am not one to give blind praise to a designer because he is currently dominating the fashion world. I saw the Marc Jacobs collection for Fall/Winter 08/09 – I was appalled. But as for these two fashion controversies, I think Marc's ideas are innovative and direct. It might not be for everyone to own, but it certainly should be something everyone can appreciate.