Open Letter:
You know when you walk into a store that is so beautiful you want to get married in it? The feeling when 3 sales associates come up to you and show you every piece of perfectly hand crafted leather you can ever imagine, and as you run your hands over the leather and those perfectly painted famed LV emblems you know it just screams for you? I do. Did you know there was a time where it took 8 days and 30 men to craft together just one Louis Vuitton? High Fashion=High Quality, and that is what you get anytime you purchase something from Louis Vuitton, Christian Louboutin, or any other high fashion designer, nothing but perfection.
You know when you walk onto a street that is so crowded and dirty you have to be careful where you step? The feeling when someone comes up to you and begs and pleads to show you just one thing, anything of perfectly manufactured pleather, and as you run you hands over the pleather and those not so perfectly painted JU emblems you know it just screams for you?
I think its time to discuss a very important topic, the replication of high fashion products. This letter is to all of you who buy replicas. I get it I really do, you feel like a winner walking down the street carrying something that you only bought for $25 but someone else bought a different version for $2500. Its empowerment, confidence, a poise that comes over you.
So many designers poor there heart and soul into their designs, they are everything to them. Working long hours trying to come up with new designs each season, trying to pick out the crème de le crème of products. I can only imagine the feeling when a designer sees his or her designs replicated and sold on the streets.
Replicating is like plagiarizing and stealing. If plagiarizing is illegal and stealing is illegal how come replicating is not. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines plagiarizing as “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own”, and Stealing as “to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice”, this is what replicating is.
It takes hard work to create fashion. Louis Vuitton has 250 employees all of which have specific jobs in creating each handbag. Some of you may not even notice the differences between the real and fake handbags, which is understandable there was a point where I didn’t either. It is very easy to have the mentality that if you can get away with it looking real then why not buy it? I think a lot of my reasoning behind my position on this topic comes from the principality of it. Is the manufacturing and purchasing of replicas the easy way out?
It takes hard work to create replicas. Aside from street vendors there are hundreds of online websites where you can purchase replicas. The scary part is that they look identical, that it almost becomes impossible to notice any differences at all. This website (http://www.handbagslouisvuittonreplica.com/) has the best replicas I have ever seen being sold for 90% off. What a steal, right?
Every female wants to be apart of fashion; it is one of the greatest most long lasting industries in the world, who wouldn’t want to be apart of it? While designer handbags and clothes are thousands of dollars, replicas offer those who cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars on one handbag a way out. They allow people to express themselves through fashion without having to mortgage their house or sell something valuable. It is easy and accessible.
I have had my eye on an Hermes Birkin bag for quite sometime now, the only other problem besides their five digit price is that they are sold out everywhere and come on a first come first serve based three year waiting list. However this website (http://www.birkinshop.com/) provides me with exactly what I want for about 95% off. What a steal, right?
While Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Hermes are all very tantalizing, they are just too much of a financial stretch for the majority of the world, forcing people to turn to the most affordable and available alternative, replicas.
While these low priced mirrored replicas are all very enticing, they are just too much of a step down for that minority of the world. I have to say that I would rather spend my money on an original high quality design that I know will essentially last me a lifetime.
This letter is to all of you who buy replicas. I get it I really do, you feel like a winner walking down the street carrying something that you only bought for $25 but someone else bought a different version for $2500. Its empowerment, confidence, a poise that comes over you. However, I challenge you to go ahead and buy that $2500 design and watch how the smell and feeling of the leather entices you, and watch how that feeling of empowerment, confidence, and poise you once felt will turn its back on you just as you realize it was all meagerness.
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