You could spot a fake a mile off. The plasticky “Prado” wallets arranged on bedsheets on the pavements lining Canal Street in New York bore only a passing resemblance to the ones for sale in the Prada store in Soho. The fake Chanel bags they lay next to were lumpy, misshapen and smelled a little like petrol. An attempt to make a quick buck by buying one and passing it off as genuine—perhaps by taking it to a small local consignment store—would have been met with raised eyebrows and a chuckle.
What an innocent time. Now booming demand, technological improvements and sheer opportunism have transformed the market for buying and selling luxury bags. lvmh, a luxury conglomerate, sold about €10bn-worth ($13bn) of leather goods in 2013. By 2023 it was selling €42bn-worth—a 320% increase in just ten years. (The global economy, by contrast, grew by only 30%.) Dedicated reselling platforms, such as the RealReal and Vestiaire Collective, have expanded rapidly. Revenues from reselling luxury bags and clothing now add up to around $200bn a year. So producers of counterfeits have upped their game, too. Women now gather in Reddit groups to “qc” (quality check) bags they order from China via WeChat.
