The availability of dupes, items that are similar but less expensive than the originals, is even broader thanks to mass retailers such as Amazon and AliExpress. This photo shows a fake Louis Vuitton toiletry bag next to air freight parcels in a warehouse at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, outside Paris, on Dec. 20, 2024.GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP/Getty Images
Years ago, retail consultant and watch enthusiast Doug Stephens bought a fake Tag Heuer from a street vendor in New York on a lark. “It was so light, it felt like it could float on water,” says the founder and president of consultancy Retail Prophet, referring to the fact that counterfeit watches have traditionally been made with less substantial materials than their genuine counterparts. “It was so obviously a fake.”
But times have changed. “The watches that are coming out of China now are the same weight down to a fraction of an ounce of the originals,” he says. “The movements are for all intents and purposes the same, and the materials are the same. There are factories that are dedicated to reverse engineering these things. It really is stunning.”
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Say hello to the era of the superfakes, illegal counterfeits that are so high quality in terms of raw materials and attention to detail that even the most eagle-eyed experts have trouble distinguishing them from the real deal. Driving demand are younger consumers who can’t afford the authentic items but feel pressure to keep up with the status symbols they see others posting on social media. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they view luxury products as an everyday expectation, not something one saves up for or receives only to celebrate a milestone such as a graduation or promotion.
The superior quality of fakes today has made taking consignments a tricky business for resellers. TheRealReal, a U.S. based online second-hand marketplace, has several proprietary technologies. They catch 5,000 counterfeits a month using various techniques including microscopic images. Many Canadian resellers, such as the Fashion Edit and VSP Consignment in Toronto and Vespucci in Calgary, rely on Entrupy, a leading authentication service based in New York. Entrupy boasts 99.1-per-cent accuracy in using AI to analyze millions of data points on images of handbags, sneakers and other products that clients submit through e-mail or its app. When a product is validated, Entrupy supplies a certificate of authentication so shoppers can purchase with confidence.
“There are so many fakes out there,” says Candice Sinclair, a fundraising force on the Toronto social scene and owner of several real Hermès bags. “I have friends who are worth way more money than me, and they buy counterfeit bags because they’re like, ‘I can buy the real one, but why would I?’” She also cites a friend who has genuine Louis Vuitton bags but buys luggage fakes for travel so she doesn’t have to worry about the pieces getting beat up in transit.
Ethical issues around the manufacturing of fakes don’t seem to be a concern, especially among Gen Z. “It’s not that younger customers don’t care. They are very ethical,” says Nigel Lezama, Toronto Metropolitan University associate professor of fashion studies and inclusion. “But they know from the sweatshops in Italy making Dior bags that that they are not going to escape that system by buying luxury.” (Last year, Dior was named in an Italian probe of labour exploitation, and the brand acknowledged it needs to do more to police its supply chain.)
Another reason for the increased popularity of fakes is no doubt how easy they are to obtain. Counterfeit Vuittons and Chanels that boldly bear the LV and CC logos have been around for decades, but were once sold with cloak and dagger caution at private house parties or on Canal St. in New York. Today, they are a click away through e-tailers such as Beijing-based DHgate, a platform and app for third-party sellers offering a vast array of products, including pretend Prada. The availability of dupes, items that are similar but less expensive than the originals, is even broader thanks to mass retailers such as Amazon and AliExpress. Over the holidays, a dupe of the iconic Hermès Birkin, which retails for upward of $10,000, went viral when it popped up on Walmart’s website for less than US$100.
“If you grab a link from Adidas for the Samba sneaker and you put it into the search bar of dupe.com, it will point you toward sources of duplicate products that match the description of the Samba, or the Birkin bag or whatever the case may be,” Stephens says.
But it’s not just clothing and accessories being copied these days.
“It’s virtually any coveted product that relies on disproportionately large margins,” he adds. “I have clients at several very, very large brands in the beauty category. I can attest that this is keeping them up at night.”
In January, Charlotte Tilbury’s much-duped eponymous line launched a campaign called “Legendary. For a Reason.” A clear attempt to discourage fans from shopping dupes, it touts the British makeup artist’s most-copied products, including Flawless Filter, Hollywood Contour Wand and Glowgasm.
“There’s a culture of dupes that is getting stronger and stronger, and there are brands like Quince that have built a whole business on that culture,” says Joëlle Grunberg, partner in McKinsey & Co’s apparel, fashion, and luxury group. The San Francisco-based Quince produces replicas of luxury basics such as silk T-shirts and cashmere sweaters at affordable prices while using the same raw materials as famous brands.
A chart on quince.com compares a US$249.90 baby cashmere sweater made with fibre that is “meticulously combed from young cashmere goats under one year old during their natural moulting season” with a similar piece by Loro Piana that retails for US$2,825. Quince was founded in 2018 and by last year had racked up annual sales of US$340.3-million.
The motivation to purchase from Quince is not necessarily owing to a tight budget. The wealthy, too, are shopping dupes. “They are saying, ‘Do I really need to pay a premium for a brand name?’” Grunberg says.
The State of Fashion 2025 report, published by McKinsey and the Business of Fashion, reveals that nearly one in three U.S. adults say they intentionally bought a dupe of a premium or luxury product and 17 per cent would do so again even if they could afford the original. Even more telling is that 54 per cent of consumers surveyed in the U.S., Britain, Germany and China responded that they would they keep buying dupes even if they had more money to spend.
In some respects, makers of luxury goods have brought the competition from copycats on themselves by raising prices into the stratosphere. In addition, the disintegrating middle class has virtually eliminated the aspirational consumer.
“You can either afford luxury goods or you can’t,” Stephens says. “And those who can’t are now either choosing dupes or resale, but both of those markets are absolutely exploding.” According to Global Data, the worldwide resale apparel market experienced its fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth in 2024, with growth of 17.6 per cent to reach US$204.7-billion, outperforming the traditional apparel market, which only grew 0.1 per cent. Dupe sales are harder to track but #dupe is one of the most searched terms on Tiktok with nearly 6 billion views.
Does more choice at a variety of price points indicate a democratization of luxury? “Not at all. I think what this signals is the mainstream acceptance of forgery,” Stephens says. “Younger consumers, in particular, are willing to go for that social flex, for the appearance of affluence and wealth and success, because when they look at social media, that’s all they’re seeing coming back at them.”
Lezama believes they are also making a political statement about who gets to decide what luxury is. “Young people are pushing back against that corporate discourse that’s telling them what’s of value and what’s not. To carry a dupe is to say, ‘I know what the real thing is. I have this one, and it challenges the value of that one.’”
