In the past fashion labels and houses created garments or accessories that were then illegally bootlegged by independent manufacturers - in the mid-'80s the majority of fake designs circulating in Italy were for example produced in and around Naples. Then came High Street stores that started replicating looks off the catwalk and reproducing them quickly, using factories in China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam or Turkey.
Though unfair, this practice was perfectly understandable: you copy indeed something really cool and exclusive that the majority of people can not afford and sell it at cheaper prices. Yet, in the last few years, things have dramatically changed: designers do not seem to have enough time to create and they probably spend a lot of time on the Internet looking for ideas that can be copied and quickly reproduced.
At the same time Aliexpress, the online retail services offering products by businesses and companies in China arrived on the scene. Most products sold by the retailer look cool and fashionable, but quite often their quality is low and, though they feature popular bands, celebrities or characters, they are not manufactured with licensing agreements.
Yet in previous posts we looked at the fact that nowadays you may be seeing a New Order/Joy Division T-shirt on a runway à la Raf Simons and then you can find more or less the same design on Aliexpress. The former is usually the fruit of a legal collaboration, while the latter is a fake. The process is the same seen in Moschino's S/S 18 collection with fully licensed "My Little Pony" products that genuinely made you wonder if Jeremy Scott had been surfing Aliexpress and looking at the various fake and illegal "My Little Pony" items.
But now we have further developments in what may be called "The Aliexpress Syndrome": the online retailer has been offering for months merchandise inspired by the Netflix series "Stranger Things" (the same products are bought and resold by quite a few Amazon sellers...).
At the begining of October a "Stranger Things" top appeared on Louis Vuitton's S/S 18 runway: in his collection inspired by anachronisms, Nicolas Ghesquière collided indeed brocade frock coats, silk running shorts and a shirt with the poster for the popular series (Ghesquière is a fan and last year he invited the cast to visit his studio).
Then yesterday (to mark the release next Friday of the second series of the supernatural thriller), Topshop launched its "Stranger Things" capsule collection.
The latter includes 28 pieces - T-shirts and sweaters with logos, prints with characters and phrases used on the show, caps, backpacks and lunchboxes - characterised by retro moods and '80s graphics.
Now it is somehow easy to justify these three levels of products: you get the cheapest illegal collaboration, then the deluxe legal collaboration and the affordable legal collaboration. The only difference is that, up until a few years ago, the cheapest illegal product came after the most expensive one, but now stages have turned, proving that fashion has become rather lazy.
Illegal copies shouldn't be encouraged, but you seriously wonder if in this case consumers should actually opt for an item found on Aliexpress or Amazon, after all, who guarantees that the pieces in the Topshop capsule collection do not come from the same factories or retailers that manufacture the fake products in China?
Or maybe there is a better way to react to this mess and boycott them all: do you really want a "Stranger Things" design? Well, rather than buying a luxury one, a High Street copy or a fake product from a major online retailer, got for the DIY route. In this way you will join the trend, but will do so in a unique and personal way.
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