My story starts off with me wanting to treat myself to an LV bag for my birthday. I had been eyeing a couple of nice styles, and was excited to finally put in the order and welcome a piece of luxury into my life. Little did I know that navigating through the world of real vs fake was about to become the story of my life.
At first, it all seemed pretty easy to spot if something was real or fake. The workmanship and material quality were obvious clues that you could usually spot with the untrained eye, not to mention the price for the authentic option was significantly higher than the fake. However, as I started to read more into differentiating, I began to discover the world of replicas were it was far trickier to spot the real vs fake.
For starters, there were replicas being sold that looked almost exactly like the originals. Even the workmanship and the materials looked incredibly similar. That being said, there were a few ways that I could differentiate. I read up on if there was any middleman involved in the transaction, and referred to the type of packaging that comes with the product.
The packaging was a major factor in weeding out the real from fake. Usually, genuine LV bags will come with an authenticity card, as well as being marked with an LV label and eye-catching accessories such as mirror tags, ribbons, and box protectors. Additionally, due to their currencies, the tags itself tend to be of higher quality as the materials used are usually of higher quality.
The next giveaway was to look at the LV label. This is an important step to authenticate your bag, and genuine bags should have patterns inside the label, as well as spellings of LV over the label. Another element was to measure the fact that sometimes, the logo on the bag do not have the correct proportions and may be the wrong size, shape, and color.
When it comes to buying a bag, nothing replaces using your own judgment. In some cases, you might not spot the exact differences between an authentic and a fake bag, and although it might be okay to buy a replica, it pays off to know exactly what you are getting.