我看中了 Sean Wotherspoon 最近推出的 Nike Air Max 1 和 Air Max 97 混搭鞋款，鞋身有北齋風格的波浪刺繡和雙重 Swoosh。這款令人垂涎三尺、轉售價值超過 1,000 美元的球鞋就在眼前！當然，除了它不是之外。你可以看到多層多色燈芯絨之間的膠水，而且鞋頭像木屐一樣鈍。巴黎品牌 Goyard 的手提包和錢包上有令人信服的字母圖案，但縫線亂七八糟，襯裡也是尼龍而非棉質。其他印有著名標誌的商品都應該寫上 「shoddy」。我發現的第一個 Rimowa 手提包的鉸鏈不對，是塑料而不是鋁，而且圖案也很奇怪。
當我們再往前走時，複製品的情況就有所改善。Salvatore Ferragamo "手袋和皮帶上的扣子看起來很有質感。聲稱是 Moncler 製造的夾克上有類似真的 Moncler 產品上的登記標籤、全息圖和 QR 代碼，供買家檢查真偽。
無論原因為何，氣氛都變差了。買到假貨似乎也不是那麼無害。我們離開了。回到倫敦後，我把 T 恤塞給兒子。他稍稍從筆記型電腦上抬起頭： 「哦，爸爸，那明顯是假的 - 你留著吧。
插圖：Bill Brown
The great Chinese fake-off
On a trip to buy a counterfeit manbag, Luke Leitch gets handbagged
Jan 16th 2019
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By Luke Leitch
Irecently visited Shanghai for the first time. There was plenty to see: the Bund, the glamorous French quarter, the skyscrapers of Pudong. But my true priority was to check out the fake designer goods. I had heard that it’s impossible to distinguish some products from the real thing – and I was on the lookout for an aluminium carry-on case by my luggage crush-brand Rimowa at something lower than the usual £800 ($1,020) price tag.
Three friends and I jumped into a taxi to the Science and Technology Museum, which I’d been told was the best place to find fakes in Shanghai. Had she duped me? Hordes of immaculate schoolchildren were trooping in, but I could see no fake merchandise. We were about to leave when a woman in a Gucci cap approached, offering to take us to the fakes market. This turned out to be a huge underground mall alongside the museum. In the sprawling warren, small stores offered counterfeit goods in plain sight.
I spotted Sean Wotherspoon’s recent mash-up of the Nike Air Max 1 and Air Max 97, complete with Hokusai-style wave embroidery and double Swoosh. This highly coveted sneaker, with a resale value of over $1,000, was here IRL! Except, of course, it wasn’t. You could see the glue between the layers of multi-colour corduroy and the toe was clog-like and blunt. Totes and purses from Parisian brand Goyard had a convincing monogram but wonky stitching and a nylon, not cotton, lining. Other items with famous logos should all have read “shoddy”. The first Rimowa I spotted had the wrong hinges, was plastic not aluminium, and had a strange pattern.
The copies improved as we ventured further. The buckles on the “Salvatore Ferragamo” handbags and belts looked convincingly substantial. Jackets purporting to be by Moncler carried registration tags, holograms and QR codes similar to those on real Moncler products, for buyers to check authenticity.
I bought a fake Off-White T-shirt for my son. The cotton was basic for an item that should cost $300; the screen-printed logo was well reproduced but inside its “Made in Italy” label (no chance!) was a poor semblance of the brand’s usual art-gallery style caption. Still, for 50 yuan ($7) I thought it’d do for a 12-year-old.
Some people see buying designer goods as daylight robbery: the margin between production costs and sale price is grossly inflated. The value of such items is psychological. By contrast, the counterfeit wares in Shanghai could be bartered down to a reasonable price. But they had their own undeclared margins: you had no idea who made them or in what circumstances, who profited from the sale or the wider consequences of disregarding intellectual property.
The stirrings of my conscience ceased when I happened on a Rimowa rip-off that, though not flawless, had a superb indented logo and ridged aluminium body; the serial details looked perfect; and the padded interior gorgeous. By the time its seller went down to 700 yuan – around 10% of the original – I was poised to buy.
Just then I heard my name being called from another bag shop. My three friends were spooked. They’d been ushered into a back room and offered “special” Chanel bags, which apparently came complete with the correct holograms, security tags and hardware – they didn’t seem to be fakes at all. My friend said that she’d get the 2,000 yuan out of a cash machine when a tough-looking fellow in a (fake) Gucci jacket suddenly emerged from another room, made as if to block the exit, and demanded immediate payment by card.
He may have been angry at a possible lost sale. But selling fakes has also become more perilous recently: the Chinese government is cracking down on counterfeiters and some luxury firms use investigators to hunt them down. Perhaps the heavy was worried that we were ourselves fake tourists, sniffing out copies and stolen goods.
Whatever the reason, the vibe soured. Buying fakes didn’t seem so harmless after all. We left. Back in London, I slipped my son his T-shirt. He briefly looked up from his laptop: “Oh dad, that’s blatantly a fake – you keep it.”■