Counterfeit Design

During my recent vacation in Italy and Greece, I naturally spent A LOT of time shopping. I am kind of a clothing junkie and really like stores like Zara, Pull & Bear, Fred Perry, Prada and Diesel. I'm also absolutely fascinated by the (seemingly always) Senegalese guys that sell all the counterfeit products out on the street. It's really the cat and mouse game played between them and the cops that I most enjoy, but sometimes their wares are pretty amazing too.

In Venice I found it really amusing (and I should have photographed it) that these guys would set out their blankets with neatly lined up Prada and Louis Vuitton bags on the pedestrian street right in front of the real Prada and Louis Vuitton stores. They're ridiculousy fake looking to the trained eye, but they still had quite a steady clientele.

In Athens, the cat and mouse game was in full force. First off, there were tons more vendors with lots more product. Anything from the normal purses and wallets, to sunglasses and belts. Funny enough, as homogenous as Greece is, the conterfeit pushers had a fairly broad range of ethnicities. Oh sure, the main purse salesmen were still recent decendents from Senegal, but then you'd have these Sri Lankan guys selling lighted lighters, sunglasses, some not quite as fancy purses and well, flowers. There were some China-men too selling headmounted LED flashlights and dvds. Surprisingly, they were not selling fake purses or glasses even though China is where most of that stuff is actually made. Hmm.

Alright, I had a point in all of this, it was about counterfeit design. Again, anyone at all familiar with high end purses can detect with ease how bogus the bags are - even when they really do say Prada and not Panda or something. The glasses are even worse. Aside from being poorly made, they are probably dangerouse for our eyes to look through. Where am I headed you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It was the belts! Some of the belts were awesome! There were Gucci and Louis and Diesel and Fendi. But you know what were the best? Dolce & Gabbana. They were amazing! Look for yourself, I ended up buying 2 of them!


Actually, the whole point of my post is that the 2 fake belts I bought are actually cooler than any real D&G belts I've ever seen and ironically at a 1oth the price. And why you ask? Design, that's why. Whoever designed these did a really nice job, and thanks to them, I look awsome!