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Sunday, August 19, 2001
Women fake it with knockoff designer labels
Pricey purses prompt jump in street sales
By Holly Auer
Scripps Howard News Service

Scripps Howard News Service

Knock-off designer purses are for sale by many sidewalk vendors in bigger cities.

It has a name like a traditional household item: the envelope. Or like food: the baguette, the pancake.
   It sits locked behind a glass display window in a department store, or perched on a shelf in a trendy boutique. It also dangles, swinging in the wind, off a metal spike on a street vendor's cart.
   For the discerning handbag lover, choices abound.
   Only one universal truth emerges from the sea of slick leather, brushed tweed and glittery beading: Rarely does the perfect pocketbook come cheap.
   Even the tiniest bags from popular designers such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton cost as much as $500 this season.
   But with handbag trends slipping in and out of style several times a year, some women get a little crafty when shopping for the season's must-haves. Filene's Basement, T.J. Maxx and online retailers such as bluefly.com are favorites for snapping up heavily discounted brand name picks. Other women comb through booth after booth of knock-off street vendors in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., searching for a convincing copycat version.
   "This would be close to $1,000," said Beth Stoner, a Richmond, Va., resident, twirling a big, glossy Prada triangle bag knock-off around her wrist as she shopped across the street from Washington's Capital Hilton. "And that's absolutely ridiculous." She's not kidding. A tiny black Prada clutch - barely big enough to hold a tube of lipstick, a credit card and a pack of TicTacs - costs $178 at Neiman Marcus this spring. For that price, one would expect leather, suede or perhaps even linen. Nope. It's 100 percent nylon.
   And since most of Prada's other top-selling creations are similarly fashioned, it's no wonder rip-offs are a dime a dozen at flea markets and street bazaars.
   Hard to fake it
   Purses with lots of "hardware," however, are harder to dupe, said April Stern Riccio, spokeswoman for Neiman Marcus in Washington. The more bangles, beads and buttons a bag designer uses, the less likely their work is to be copied and sold for a fraction of the cost on a street corner.
   Online discounters such as bluefly.com, too, are zeroing in on bargain hunters and padding their stock with the hottest handbags available, usually offering them for more than 50 percent off retail.
   Thanks to last spring's ruling in the Supreme Court case (Wal-Mart Store v. Samara Brothers), fashionistas without knockoff vendors on every corner can now get their fake fix by trolling the Internet. Greg Crowe, a self-proclaimed knockoff artist and part-owner of a Los Angeles Web site (www.anyknockoff.com) is betting they'll get hooked.
   The site hawks imitation Coach, Kate Spade and Fendi bags, as well as wannabe designer watches, shoes and scarves. More than 1,600 customers subscribe to the site's monthly newsletter, and Crowe said sales have increased 20 percent every month since the site's launch last June.
   Keeping it legal
   But every week, Crowe said, the company gets at least four or five e-mails from customers asking whether its Kate Spade knockoffs bear the teeny trademark "Kate Spade New York" label on the front. And every time he explains that they do not. Keeping its bags label-free is what keeps anyknockoff.com on the right side of the law, Crowe said.
   Walmart v. Samara Brothers established that although a product's design is distinctive, it is protected under law only if it the knockoff version features "any symbol or device likely to cause confusion as to the origin." These include the signature Gucci "G" and the "Kate Spade New York" tag on the front of each bag.
   So what about the labeled, tagged bags that most street vendors sell? They're illegal. Anyone who opts to sell - or even buy - them could be prosecuted for copyright infringement.

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