THE UNSTOPPABLE RISE OF FAKE AUTHENTICITY! THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF DUPES
Luxury Meets Accessibility — From $80 knock-off Wirkins, to #REPTOK on TikTok. Dupe culture appears here to stay!
“It’s hard to say what to think about this, because there’s a grey area. Of course I was mad. Because copying our I.P., copying our creativity is pretty much detestable—it’s stealing someone else’s work,” Hermès CEO Axel Dumas responds to Walmart’s ‘Birkin’, (the Wirkin), and dupe culture, reports The Business of Fashion.
KEY POINTS
Most dupes seem benign (being touted as similar-looking), and as the Hermès CEO Dumas points out, can be a form of flattery.
TikTok is brimming with dupe culture and videos — #reps, #dupe, #reptok.
There is a seedier side, with counterfeits being hawked.
The Business of Dupes
On the one hand, it’s detestable, on the other, it’s flattery.
They say, “any publicity is good publicity”.
No one is going to confuse an $80 Walmart ‘Wirkin’ with a genuine $20,000+ Hermès Birkin, right? Amazon is getting in on the act, too, with its own Birkin-like assortment.
Walmart and Amazon are selling similar-looking options. They are not being touted as the real thing.
These ‘alternatives’ are not counterfeit, but the law around this area is nebulous.
Professor Susan Scafidi of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School, as quoted by Vogue, “ When dupes don’t use the trademarked name or logo of the genuine item, they’re less likely to be considered counterfeits,” she says.
But some product designs are so iconic (Scafidi points to the Hermès Birkin, Christian Louboutin’s red soles and the combined elements of Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers) that the design itself can serve as a trademark, even without the name or the logo.”
And it isn’t just similar-looking products, there are voluminous counterfeits — called #reps, short for replicas.
More on that below.
Occasionally, I buy paper from one of the Chinese marketplaces, and the site is teeming with Joah Brown fakes, with pictures lifted from the Joah Brown site.
Dupe — Say What?!
The term ‘dupe’ — or duplicate — refers to knock-off versions of more expensive items. The ‘Wirkin’ is one such example. Those Amazon versions are another.
Pick your favorite high-end, or even not so high-end, product — Jo Malone fragrances, Chanel handbags, Lululemon apparel — there is (likely) a dupe for it, somewhere!
If anyone needs proof of this, check out TikTok!
Dupes and Reps
The duplicates and replicas wouldn’t exist, if there wasn’t an audience for them. And the market seems gigantic.
Many of the videos were showcasing similar-looking merchandise, but there were also clips hawking ‘reps’ (replicas), with links to spreadsheets and third-party sellers.
One list that I saw had ‘Balenciaga’ and Rick Owens options, with photos and the associated sales links.
Legality
TFL asserts that dupes raise challenges for trademark law, and can undermine the strength of trademark protection, due to consumer perception of a design as a good itself and not a source indicator.
The Hermès Birkin design is iconic. I’m not sure I’d say that the Wirkin looks all that close. And there are legal tests for that very thing. But those dupes that are or do, may open themselves up to litigation.