Fashion Briefing: What to do with all those counterfeit bags

The RealReal opened a pop-up on Canal Street in New York on Thursday, offering 35 styles of luxury handbags, but none of them are for sale. The reason: they are all fake.

Rather than a store, the pop-up is actually an installation. The RealReal has teamed up with creative agency Mythology to create what is essentially a fake storefront displaying fake bags. The RealReal classifies this effort as a marketing investment. The idea is to educate consumers on the difference between real and fake bags, help them spot the difference, and showcase The Real Reals' dedication to authenticity.

After several high-profile lawsuits between brands and resellers, resellers are using counterfeits sent to them by potential sellers both for marketing to customers and for training authenticators. While dupe culture has led to more counterfeits for both luxury and cheaper brands, efforts like that of The RealReal seek to discourage both the sale and purchase of these products from of the general public.

Over the past 13 years, counterfeits have evolved. They're being done faster and more accurately than ever before, said The RealReal President and COO Rati Sahi Levesque. We have continually invested heavily in advancing our technology and training our expert authenticators, ensuring that we maintain [fakes] out of the market.

The location of the pop-up was chosen strategically. Canal Street has historically been one of the largest markets for counterfeit bags, and it's common to find dozens of vendors on the street and behind the scenes selling high-quality knockoffs. The 35 knockoffs on display at the pop-up include popular and commonly counterfeited bags like the Louis Vuitton Speedy, Hermes Birkin and Chanel Flap Bag.

Between now and September, The RealReal will host regular activations on the top floor of the pop-up. For example, one day a month, customers can submit a fake bag to enter a draw to win a real copy of the same bag. The top floor will also host discussions with experts from the handbag, leatherworking and authentication industries.

Luxury brands protect their brands and the issue of counterfeits has driven a wedge between them and retailers. Chanel was notoriously defensive, suing The RealReal and What Goes Around Comes Around for potential counterfeit sales and the right to claim authenticity of the bags they sell. Meanwhile, Nike has for follow-up StockX for similar concerns.

Kristen Naiman, creative director at The RealReal, said counterfeits are an inevitable problem in the luxury industry. However, analyzing the bags and how they are made can be a valuable learning tool for authenticators and consumers, she said.

Counterfeits are a complex subject, Naiman said. Like The RealReal, they were originally a response to the exclusivity of luxury fashion. So we're going to share everything we know and hear what designers, thought leaders, artisans and our community have to say.

After some aggressive cost cutting, The RealReal has seen a rebound over the past six months, finally reaching profitability in March of this year with quarterly revenue of nearly $150 million.

Ben Hemminger, co-founder of luxury resale platform Fashionphile, told Glossy that his team keeps stacks of fake bags they've received over the years in the company's warehouses.

Before, we would just send fake bags back for free, but then people would send us anything they weren't sure about, Hemminger said, speaking Tuesday at the Glossy E-commerce Summit in Miami. So we started charging a $50 return fee for fake bags, which reduced that amount. And often when people find out a bag is fake, if they don't really know, they just ask us to keep it.

Hemminger said Fashionphile would not resell or even give away these fake bags, for both legal and ethical reasons. The bags therefore serve as educational tools. Fashionphiles' authentication team will take these counterfeits apart, compare them to real bags, and catalog the identifiable common features of the fake bags. The bags can also serve as functional wall art, Hemminger said. A deconstructed fake Louis Vuitton Speedy bag can be found assembled at Fashionphiles' offices in New York and California.

A lot of people ask us if we can slip them one of our scythes aside, but we never would, Hemminger said. We use them for scientific purposes or we destroy them.

The executive moves this week

• Vasiliki Petrou is leave Unilever where she served as CEO of the Prestige Division for a decade.
• Cécile Cabanis was appointed deputy financial director at LVMH, which makes her the likely successor to current financial director Jean-Jacques Guiony.
• Régis Rimbert previously worked for the Austrian hosiery brand Wolford in the early 2010s, and is now to come back as the company's new CEO, replacing Silvia Azzali.
• Peter Stieger, Chief Control Officer of Swatch Group, is outgoingwhile Damiano Casafina and Sylvain Dolla, executives from elsewhere in the company, joined the board of directors.

Learn more about the Glossy E-commerce Summit

This week in Miami, despite stormy weather, executives from major brands like Macys, Larroud and H&M gathered to share valuable insights on the challenges of wholesale, marketing and loyalty, among other areas. Take a look at some of our coverage from the event below.

What's new to know this week