Maybe the big bag trend has persisted in New York City because our apartments are so small. Mostly I’ve been getting edged out of what little space I have on my morning L train commute by the finely-detailed designer leather basins. They take up as much space as I do and require roughly the same amount of skin to make. So, I admit it, since I’m going to be inconvenienced by them, I want one for myself.
Normally I’d go to H&M or Target for cheap, fast fashion. But no legitimate designer imitation is good enough when I’m being crushed by the real thing on the subway everyday. Still, I simply can’t afford to spend my monthly rent in the name of defensive fashion.
My friend Marin suggested we check out Chinatown. She’d made the trek with visiting relatives to buy fake designer bags, not from the open stands, but from the black market vendors who whisper, “Coach, Gucci, Chanel?”
“It’s crazy,” she warned. “They take you into dingy basement hideouts, but I guess the bags are pretty good.”
While I’d heard about the basement bag trade in Chinatown, it was in the same way I’d heard about visiting Ellis Island. Parents and siblings of friends and coworkers have done it, but not me. Until now.
Those friends described long, dark passageways and locked doors behind which lay the possibility of bounty scientifically cloned from the offspring of Milan design houses. I had to see it for myself. So I made plans for a Saturday out, feeling slightly apprehensive.
A report called “Bootleg Billions,” released by the city comptroller’s office in 2004, states that counterfeit goods follow the same trade pattern as the real thing, mostly originating in Asia. But Asia, with the exception of Japan, has the lowest enforcement rate of intellectual property rights in the world.
The fakes are often nestled in 40-foot containers along with legitimate goods and are tough to monitor. The problem for the city is that illegal goods can’t be taxed. In 2003, $23 billion was spent on counterfeit products, depriving citizens of about $1 billion in tax money. Whether or not that money would have been put to good use is unknown, I told myself.
However, genuine luxury goods manufacturers have another, even grislier take. “Counterfeiting is never going to have a positive affect on any legitimate business. Instead it deteriorates the incentives to invest in the best talent and to create,” said Fabio Silva, intellectual property counsel for Burberry in the United States. “Consumers, legislators and policymakers should not lose sight of the fact that counterfeiting has been linked to terrorism and drug operations and often involves the use of child labor working in dreadful conditions.”
Silva also said Burberry has an in-house team working with local law enforcement throughout the world, including Canal Street, to interrupt counterfeiting operations. Burberry works with other brands, such as luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), Gucci and Dior to initiate enforcement. Raids usually result in the arrest of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, many of whom go to prison and pay fines and damages. “Burberry always pushes for the maximum penalty against trademark thieves,” Silva said.
None of this sounded remotely appealing, especially the part about child labor. Still, I convinced myself that Big Oil remains the most evil culprit for global misdeeds. Since I don’t drive, who will the search for one oversized handbag truly hurt? Yet, I couldn’t help but think of the little hands that might have had to endure pain to sew that bag for me.
I spent Saturday morning visiting the downtown boutiques of labels I anticipated spotting in Chinatown. At the bright, airy, flower-laden Coach store, a handsome salesman in a black sweater showed me how to spot a knockoff. Gently handling this spring’s signature Soho Satchel ($358), he pointed out the perfectly even stitching and the way the Cs lined up in a geometrically pleasing pattern along each seam.
On my way out, the store manager, Chris, smiling brilliantly in a pink Coach signature scarf, spritzed “Coach The Fragrance” onto a little card for me.
Prada was crowded and loud, rather like going to a nightclub in the Meatpacking District. But the bag showroom was breathtaking. Burberry was like a relaxing bedroom of a wealthy and sophisticated lover—manly, warm and inviting.
At 3 p.m., I left to meet Marin and our friend Jane on Canal and Lafayette. I didn’t give them the details on my findings, afraid we’d loose our nerve. Our first stop was an alley off Canal that felt like an exotic bazaar. Vendor’s tents were lined with hanging bags that either lacked a label or had a misspelling, like Dolce & Gabana with only one “b.”
A woman standing in front of her tent, the back wall overtaken by a rack filled with bright kimonos, said “Bags, Coach, Gucci?” Marin nodded. “Two at a time,” the woman said. She parted the kimonos and beckoned Jane and I through a small door concealed in the wall. Like Alice in Wonderland, we found ourselves giants in a tiny room filled with eight other women and floor-to-ceiling with purses.
“Are they real?” I asked the bag-room monitor. Frowning, she snapped, “No. Copies.” Someone yelled over my head, “How much for the Chanel?”
“Ninety-five,” the woman said. “Retail.” Eyeing the locked door, while trying to calculate how long we could survive on the oxygen in the room, I longed for my Coach salesman and wondered if this could really be considered retail.
Just then Jane snapped a picture. “No pictures,” the woman said. “Erase it.”
Now she was blocking the locked door with her arm. “I just want to send them to my family in Michigan,” Jane lied, a true believer in the right to document. “No pictures,” the woman said. After about three minutes of Jane arguing to a constant stream of, “No pictures,” I whispered, “Maybe you should erase it.” The woman looked at me. “Are you with her?”
“Yes, we’re from Michigan,” I lied, imagining her getting on a walkie-talkie to have some ruffians dispose of us.
“OK, fine, ” she said suddenly, opening the wall. We grabbed Marin and left.
After giddily reviewing the photo on Jane’s camera, Marin said, “We have to do just one more, for the experience.” We headed up Canal. A cute teenage girl approached muttering, “Bags, Coach?” We nodded and followed.
She walked around the corner, down a side street and kept on for two blocks. We stopped in front of an unmarked door. She typed into her cell phone and a man’s head popped out of the doorway, “This way.”
It smelled musty. We followed him down a steep flight of stairs, made a left, walked through a long corridor and made another left, down a shorter corridor, before finding a room similar to the last, but slightly larger. The floor was brown and the walls plain—except for hooks holding hundreds of purses. I felt bad for the bags, picturing the glass concealed, back-lit collection at Prada.
Our host sat on a fold-up chair in the middle of the room ignoring questions like, “Where do you get these?” We studied the Dooney & Bourke, Burberry, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana (two “bs”) and Chanel. I lamely asked how much for a large Coach satchel, and he said $60.
I just couldn’t love this bag. Back in civilization I had my eye on a real $400 Anne Klein reduced to $120 at Loehmann’s. For the price of two fake Coaches, I could have a real Anne Klein, guilt free.
I examined the other Coach bags and found the “Cs” at the seams in a jumble. The fabric felt flimsy, and the styles weren’t what I’d seen in the boutique. “I’m not feeling any of these,” I told my friends. Jane was mildly admiring a large nylon Prada tote and asked how much. “Thirty,” the man said.
Marin opened the front pocket to find the zipper broken. “The zipper’s broken,” Jane said just as a woman we hadn’t met before entered with a walkie-talkie. “How about $25?”
At this the woman began yelling. “We say $30. You say $25. We say $20. No!”
“But the zipper’s broken,” the three of us said in unison.
“No. Go! Go! Go!”
Incredulous, Jane responded, “I’ve never met anyone who wanted to make a sale less than you do right now.”
“Go!”
We scuttled out of the basement and straight to Little Italy, bagless and glad of it. “How could someone selling from a basement get insulted when we negotiate for damaged merchandise?” Marin wondered aloud.
“It wasn’t worth the trouble, was it?” I asked.
The answer is best left to Coco Chanel, whose words, etched into a mirrored wall at her Soho boutique, read: “Elegance is not limited to a woman’s wardrobe, it is as much the way she conducts herself and her way of life.”
