Economic forecast for next year promises to be not the most optimistic - we are almost resigned to this and are trying to figure out how the fashion market will change in various segments. We have already found out what predictions are being made by consulting specialists and industry people, but we have ignored the delicate, but relevant topic of fakes. Meanwhile, experts say that it is during periods of economic downturn that there is an increase in demand for fakes of all stripes. Let's figure out where the history of counterfeiting in fashion originates and what is the attitude towards it now.
Cheap imitations moved
one step higher
in the social hierarchy
Intellectual property protection is a problem that tormented the minds of people for thousands of years. In Ancient Egypt, Rome, and over the next few millennia, brands served this purpose. In the Middle Ages, guilds of craftsmen began to appear, each of which personally signed the product he created. With the advent of the industrial revolution, when production volumes began to gain unprecedented proportions, companies began to develop trademarks - the authenticity of products was now determined by the patented name. Around the same time, the notorious Charles Frederic Worth began his career - the man who is called the father of Parisian haute couture and who became the first couturier to sign his works, in fact, laying the foundation for branding in the fashion industry. Since the 1950s, with the spread of the practice of licensing (Christian Dior was the pioneer and leader in this business), brands and logos have become a ubiquitous phenomenon and have acquired an almost sacred meaning: if earlier the name on the label meant only the authorship of the master who created the thing, now it has become a marker social status and financial solvency.
Naturally, not everyone who dreamed of a Parisian couturier outfit could afford this luxury. Cheap imitations were not only made a little closer to the material dream, but also moved up a step in the social hierarchy - even if such an upgrade was essentially a big soap bubble. It was the garment industry that became a tasty morsel for the producers of illegal copies, because clothing is the most demonstrative way to make a statement to the public “look, I can afford it”. At the beginning of the 18th century, the world-famous Lyons silk was copied so often that the organization of local weavers demanded an official law to protect intellectual property - the corresponding act was issued in 1787. By the way, in the same year, British textile companies responded with a demand to license the production of local fabrics: flax, cotton, muslin and chintz. In the 19th century in the USA, it was especially common to copy patterns on textiles from European samples - a practice that would later move into the field of ready-to-wear and serve as a trigger for the emergence of American ready-to-wear.
French designers regularly suffered from illegal copying of American entrepreneurs, and the case often went to court - this was faced by both Paul Poiret in the 1910s and Madeleine Vionne in the 1920s (her way of fighting piracy was to mark her work with her own fingerprint). Later, the problem will affect Christian Dior, who will personally ensure that not a single living soul makes notes or sketches during the shows of his collections, and Cristobal Balenciaga - in order to at least slightly reduce the risk of illegal copies appearing, he will decide to hold his shows after how all other Parisian designers will show their collections.
By the middle of the 20th century, a dilemma arose: couturiers could not stop working with American buyers, because their purchases made up a considerable part of the profit, but at the same time, financial losses from illegal fakes were fatal - in 1958, for this reason, the French fashion industry lost 200 million dollars of export income. Not to mention the fact that the low quality of copy products significantly hit the image of this or that house. In order to prevent information leakage, the designers went to a variety of methods: from direct intimidation of staff to creating supercomfortable working conditions so that seamstresses and cutters did not have a reason to sell precious information (for example, in the house of Christian Dior they offered free three meals a day, medical assistance, and for more motivation, posters were posted throughout the studio in the spirit of "Copy is to steal" and "Piracy is not paid").
The Parisian haute couture syndicate tried to somehow tame the flow of counterfeiting by issuing a code of honest conduct among journalists, buyers and retail representatives, and also tried to regulate where, when and how new collections should be shown. For example, if a magazine published a collection immediately after a show, all models had to be shaded so that no detail could be seen. However, it was not only American entrepreneurs who were involved in illegal illegal work - in 1956, the French police detained pirates who were going to take sketches of the collections of the main Parisian designers to Cairo.
It was partly possible to reconcile the couturier with enterprising businessmen with the introduction of the sale of official licenses. In the middle of the 20th century, this became a common practice among fashion houses, under whose name a wide variety of products were produced: from tights to fountain pens. But more importantly, resellers could use design models and patterns, creating cheaper and often simplified copies. Of course, this did not exclude the likelihood of piracy, but it greatly simplified the control over the goods released under the brand name.
In the studio Christian Dior were hung posters: "To copy is to steal"
In the 60s, with the appearance of Bazaar Mary Quant and Biba boutiques by Barbara Kulanskaya, fashion became more accessible, and an expensive label ceased to be a hallmark of a person's position. In the 70s and 80s, fakes were still the scourge of the fashion industry. For example, in the late 70s, with the popularity of designer jeans, the market was flooded with cheap copies, but the designers did not attach serious importance to this. In the last decade of the 20th century, the situation has changed dramatically, which was facilitated by two factors: the boom in logomania and the development of China as a center of light industry.
In order to grow their audience, luxury brands began to offer customers a touch of the world of luxury by putting up cheaper products for sale under their own name, such as perfume or accessories. This was not enough for the buyers. In addition, a bag or branded belt could cope with the function of demonstrating conditional wealth much more efficiently than perfume. If in 1982 the International Trade Commission of the United States estimated losses from the production of pirated copies in the world at 5.5 billion dollars, then by 1988 this figure was 60 billion, and in 1996 - all 200 billion. Pseudo-Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Versace - the most coveted brands of the late 90s - are sold many times more than the originals.
In 2002, the International Anti-Piracy Coalition announced that 18% of all counterfeit goods that passed through US customs were in the luxury category, from watches to bags and accessories. In the mid-2000s, Burberry, a respected British brand with a long history, was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the fact that marginalized individuals from underprivileged British regions were buying fakes with a branded cage, which severely damaged the company's image. In 2004, 18% of all counterfeit products in the world were those bearing the Louis Vuitton logo. By the way, this particular brand is one of the most copied so far, along with, God forgive me, UGG and Rolex. So, 40 million fake watches are produced annually, which means for the brand a loss of about $ 600 million.
Online commerce, which began to develop just in the heyday of the 2000s, added fuel to the fire, giving illegal entrepreneurs an additional sales area, not limited either geographically or physically. Like mushrooms, sites like www.aaareplcas.com began to appear, which did not hesitate to offer to buy a Hermès or Prada bag for 10% of the original price. Not to mention retail giants like amazon.com and ebay.com. For example, in 2004, Tiffany sued eBay, claiming that 80% of the goods sold through the site with their label were fake. The same story happened two years later with the fashion conglomerate LVMH - 90% of items exhibited on eBay by Louis Vuitton, Dior and others in the LVMH portfolio turned out to be fake. By the way, the company then won the court - and eBay had to pay compensation in the amount of $ 63 million.
The problem of counterfeiting, of course, does not apply only to luxury brands: no black market is complete without Abibas, Nice sneakers and Lacoste polo with a crocodile, as if stuffed with hormones. In 2011, more than 12 million copies of all products sold under the adidas label were found to be fakes. Original Nike sneakers cost about $ 150, their replica in China is produced at a cost of $ 13, and then sold for $ 60. By the way, China is still the leader in the production of pirated products: about 70% of all fake products come from there every year. Other countries: Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, where, by the way, they even built a counterfeit museum with 4000 exhibits.
Our country has a special relationship with the topic. So, the nineties greeted us with a titanic stream of forgeries of all stripes. The task was also simplified by the close proximity of the border with China, so that it was completely impossible for brands to regulate all the fake merging into Russia. In the mid-90s, the financial losses of companies due to the sale of counterfeit products in Russia were estimated at $ 1.3 billion. Reebok even set up a special department responsible for monitoring counterfeit products on the Russian market.
22% of consumers knowingly buy fakes
One of the most copied fashion items in the 90s was, of course, Levi's jeans. With the end of the century, the fashion for fake has not disappeared anywhere: we had a Cherkizon and the Dubrovka shopping center still remains, and even the main central department store of the city was accused of selling counterfeit goods at the cost of a car. According to estimates for 2010, 70% of luxury brands sold in Moscow turned out to be fake and manufactured in China, and they could be found not only in the markets, but also in well-respected boutiques with a markup of up to 5,000 percent. In general, the well-known model of "business in Russian".
Today, 5 to 7 percent of all goods produced in the world is a pirate market with an average annual turnover of $ 500-600 billion, which is about twice the income from illegal drug trafficking. Online counterfeit sales are growing by about 20% every year. According to forecasts, in a few years it will surpass similar offline sales - the positions here are reinforced by the nuances of online commerce: the buyer cannot see the goods live.
According to a study by The HuffingtonPost, 22% of consumers knowingly buy fakes. Luxury brands do their best to minimize the fake turnover. The largest of them practice a "zero tolerance policy" towards counterfeit manufacturers and have a large staff of lawyers at their disposal who regularly monitor cases of illegal use of names. In 2012, 75 luxury brands belonging to the Parisian Comité Colbert association, founded in 1954 by Jean-Jacques Guerlain, launched an anti-piracy campaign to remind that both the production and consumption of counterfeit goods are criminalized.
For the local industry, this problem is especially acute: every year from counterfeiting luxury goods, the French economy loses 6 billion euros and 30,000 to 40,000 jobs. The biggest British brand Burberry costs £ 3.5 billion in fake sales every year, but two years ago it managed to win over £ 63 million from illegal online retailers. By the way, in the same year, Hermès approached a similar case - the brand demanded the closure of 34 sites selling fake Birkin and Kelly bags, and compensation of 100 million euros.
Since 2011, the CFDA of America's Council of Fashion Designers has teamed up with eBay and launched the You Can't Fake Fashion campaign to educate shoppers about the fraudulent craze. The initiative is clear - the largest online retailer sells one designer bag every 4 minutes, and you can guess how many of them turn out to be fake. This September, LVMH and Google agreed to work together to monitor fake online after ten years of regular litigation amid search engine connivance when selling counterfeit. Around the same time, Gucci and the French conglomerate Kering accused the largest Chinese online store Alibaba of not fighting numerous fakes on their platform - the case is already awaiting trial.
You can build a dozen theories about why, in a civilized world with a powerful fashion industry that can offer cool things in literally any price category, the turnover of fake goods is not going to decrease. The whole mechanism works on the principle of human psychology, according to which we increase our status in the eyes of others at the expense of certain visual markers. Moreover, if at the peak of brand mania, the logo was in the foreground, then with the advent of the mass market, the idea of copying a famous name was replaced by copying the product of intellectual property itself - in other words, design.
From the point of view of the buyer, opting for, for example, a Zara scarf with a print that is almost identical to the original Burberry Prorsum does not mean buying a fake. Some of this turnaround is said to have triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, after which the ostentatious luxury of flaunting labels became bad manners. However, even mass-market brands are no longer immune from piracy: on Aliexpress you can regularly find things "just like in Topshop", and H&M has repeatedly faced the sale of counterfeit products online.
Counterfeits are part of modern culture today. Art collective Shanzhai Biennial is launching a project dedicated to fakes for a variety of brands, from Chanel to Converse, which will be shown at the Colette concept store in Paris. Los Angeles-based designer Brian Lichtenberg distorts the names of famous brands and sculpts inscriptions like “Homies” (formerly Hermès) and “Feline” (aka Céline) on T-shirts and sweatshirts, which fly like hot cakes, and Brian, in turn, is copied by the Russian brand. not the CapsLock brand of Rita Nesterets, who has now taken over the Supreme and Nike logos.
After the 2008 crisis, luxury with labels on display became bad manners
In general, the fact that street brands like Supreme began to be drawn into the production of counterfeit, suggests that at some point the consumer culture shifted from elitism towards the mainstream. It is more comfortable and understandable for people to consider themselves part of a large group with certain visual codes-logos. It is clear that a logo like HBA (Hood By Air) is unlikely to say something to a person who is not immersed in the topic of fashion, but what attracts such brands is the history and communities that they create around themselves. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are already fakes on them, which can be found on the street ruins of Mexico City or on the choies.com website.
Here are some more examples of the influence of fakes on fashion. Hip-hopper M. I. A. makes a capsule collection for Versus Versace, inspired by the fakes of the fashion house that sells on the streets of New York. Yohji Yamamoto in the fall-winter 2007 collection imitates the legendary LV monogram, and Jeremy Scott dedicates a collection for Moschino to the fast food giant McDonald's - and here already flirting with semantic codes and banter over the consumer society obsessed with logos, even if it is not luxury "Golden arches".
In December, the exhibition "Faking It: Originals, Copies and Counterfeits" opened at the New York Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which tells the story of fake in the fashion industry and shows illustrative examples since the 18th century. The reason why brands are so fiercely fighting counterfeiting is not only because of the huge financial losses, but also because the image of luxury as an exceptionally high-quality, inaccessible and carefully thought-out product is being devalued. You might think that the three-digit price tags for luxury brand items are dictated by the markup for the name. This is only partially true, but just imagine how many stages any design product goes through before it ends up on store shelves.
The current situation in the world proves once again: it is necessary to cultivate a culture of consumption in society, when quality and a long life span should be the main selection criteria, and the habit of impulsive purchases should be minimized. The race for labels is a relic of the late 90s, which, I want to believe, will remain in the annals of history, and in reality, where the head of the largest corporation and one of the richest people is called the main adherent of normcore, there is hardly a place for ostentatious brand mania.