Part 4: Millennial Fashion, counterfeiting

Introduction-1

The hype culture is filled with a whole lot of positivity. The negative side of it is when you get ripped off for fakes. There are fakes all over the world: fake markets, fake streets, fake shops. This culture is filled with a whole lot of copying and ripping off, as I spoke about in ‘Part 1’. These brands aim to rip off other brands but still do not want to use names. The fakes in this culture have blown up to another level, from people making their own designs of silhouettes to people owning legit & legal stores of those brands. Believe it or not, there is a fake Supreme store in Spain, and for some reason this store has a trademark and is legal.

You could divide fakes into three different sections:

Ripping off other designs, but still not promoting the use of the logo or name

Straight up copying the name, and trying to produce a replica of the product

Trying to scam for a fake product but selling for the price it is worth.

All of these are really sad, but after all if you agree you are rocking a fake and you do not have anything to hide, then I personally would not try to shame you. If you like it and you want to rock it then do it! But if the homie pulls up with Off White X Yeezys and claims to buy it from Virgil Abloh (Off White designer) who is supposedly his cousin then no, that's not cool.

While it can be really annoying, when brands like H&M and Zara rip off other brands. I mean at least they are not stealing the logo. I agree there is no creativity but at least they do not try to promote fakes.

Fakes are all over the internet. A kid trying to buy some yeezys could get scammed on eBay for a 1000 dollars and he would not realise they are fake. Getting scammed is really sad, but if you have the knowledge to differ between a real and fake you are good. Otherwise you’ll be in trouble. There are apps like ‘Grailed’ and ‘Bump’ who are middle men to the buyer and seller. Although the middle man never knows what the product is, these apps still do their best to block off the fakes. That's why we have apps like ‘GOAT’ and ‘StockX’ who are not just middlemen passing a package but they have people who check the package. Believe it or not, ‘StockX’ comes with these legitimate tags on all their products. The fakes these days come with those ‘StockX’ tags too and that's how far the fakes have come. This shows us how tough it has become to differ between a real and fake.

I will be talking about how to differ between a fake from a real in the next blog.

Thank you.