Wednesday Rant–Faked Fashion

It's Wednesday, time for a rant. If you haven’t run across this problem yet, you eventually will be the victim of purchasing fake goods. Here’s the normal scenario, you find the pair of jeans you’ve been searching forever for, you rip open the package and find out that you have been duped. Some people aren’t  involved enough to notice they have purchased a fake, and walk around in jeans or tees that are counterfeit, without even knowing.  Faked merchandise has been plaguing eBay and other auction style sites for many years now and it’s only getting worse.  I have been the victim of buying fakes twice now. That’s right I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. The first time I went to purchase a pair of Diesel Jeans on eBay I didn’t know what I was looking for and saw a really cheap pair of jeans.  I was really hurt; all I wanted was a great pair of jeans and I got a pile of crap.  I decided that I never wanted to buy a pair of fake jeans again and started to do research.  I Googled “fake denim” and a bunch of sites can up with tutorials and pictures on how to spot fakes, mainly what to look for and what questions to ask.  One of the best sites I found was Honest Forum, now a part of Denim Blog.  Honest Forum is a great tool to use, you can post eBay addresses and/or pictures of denim and the community can tell you if they are fake or good to go.  One good aspect is that there are lots of different people who can spot fakes of most kinds of designer denim.  The main communities are Diesel, True Religion, Seven and dry denim.  This is a great site to use if you are planning on bidding on a questionable item.  This is a community, so prepare to be judged on everything you say or buy. 
The other way to spot fakes is to buy an actual pair of the jeans and to look for the hidden details.  This is a costly option and you’re not always guaranteed to be able to locate the secrets.  The fact that people actively make fakes is a horrible shame, and even worse some people will buy these fakes because they are super cheap. The worst part is the people sometimes know they are buying a fake item, but don’t care because they got the item so cheap.  The people that knowingly buy fake items are people who want to wear designer apparel but don’t have the money to buy retail, so when they see an item is super cheap they don’t hesitate. It’s a status issue around the world. My one rule of buying online is simple, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is fake.  If someone is selling a pair of Diesel Jeans for under $50 dollars then it’s probably super fake and you should stay away.  Sometimes people get lucky and find a hidden gem, but these times are few and far between.  Bottom line, use the internet resources and you should be able to to easily find a good deal on eBay or other auction sites.  We need to stop buying these fakes and start reporting sellers, this is the only way to truly stop those people who think they can get away with selling us crap and passing it off as gold.  Don’t get burned like me.
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