I’m holding a pair of Valentino sandals in pale tan leather with a geometric pattern of pyramid-shaped gold studs on the front. I run my hands over them, inspect the lining and the underside. Then I check the box they came in. After a few moments of careful consideration I come to a conclusion: “They’re fake.”
I’m correct, it turns out. The studs are too large, crude and basically ugly for these sandals to be the genuine item. The printing on the paper that lines the box is also slightly off.
My next challenge is a black bag with a Prada logo on it. The leather is soft and luxurious, and the house’s triangular metal badge looks to be high quality, as does the buckle on the strap. This must be the real deal. But I’m wrong this time. It’s another counterfeit item.
I’m not here to shop. Instead, I’m getting a lesson in authentication from Björn Holzhauer and Winnie Mcgee, verification experts at Vinted, the online fashion marketplace. On the desk are some of the tools of their trade: a magnifying glass, a dental mirror for looking behind zips and a UV light for checking authentication labels. “Very often it’s the typography that isn’t right,” Mcgee says. With the magnifying glass, she shows me how the R and A on the logo of the Prada bag aren’t properly finished or spaced. Holzhauer points out that a fake Cartier bangle is too light, and the gold isn’t the right shade — neither is the paper of the counterfeit certificate that accompanies it. Like other fake items, it will be returned to the seller.
Counterfeiting is the second-biggest source of criminal income worldwide after drugs, according to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. In fact, it’s so big that it could represent a quarter of total luxury goods sales — and is growing, according to the Harvard Business Review, accounting for as much as 60 to 70 per cent of the$4.5 trillion fakes market, ahead of pharmaceuticals and entertainment products.
That’s because “it’s becoming easier for counterfeit goods to enter the marketplace, with online sales portals, social media and apps giving anyone with internet access the ability to order products directly from suppliers abroad,” according to Detective Chief Inspector Emma Warbey of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) in London.
So far the counterfeit goods the PIPCU has seized, she says, have predominantly been produced in China and Turkey and arrive in the UK via sea, air and fast parcel. But some are manufactured in the UK. Two years ago police shut down a factory mass-producing counterfeit designer goods in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, resulting in the arrest of 19 people and the seizure of about 150 tonnes of fake designer clothing, accessories and footwear, valued at millions of pounds.
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Luxury brands, naturally, are increasingly concerned. “Counterfeiting harms the precious know-how of our craftsmen and designers — it is a form of intellectual property theft, and it endangers consumers with products that may present health risks and do not meet manufacturing or sustainability standards,” says a spokeswoman for Chanel, which inserts a metal plate with a serial number into its products. Other brands use microchips or AI systems. Patou recently launched Authentique Verify, an AI-based verification system that allows customers to download an app and scan a bag to match it to its unique digital fingerprint.
Chanel’s concern is not only about profit, the company’s spokeswoman adds. “[The practice] also has a considerable social impact, as human rights are often trampled underfoot to mass-produce counterfeits.” Chanel works with the authorities and pursues counterfeiters “through legal proceedings and participates extensively in awareness campaigns to inform consumers of the risks involved”. As a result, in 2023 action by Chanel led to the seizure of more than seven million products and components in more than 82 markets. With 1,800 new websites identified and notified, more than 60,000 posts on social networks such as Instagram were removed and in excess of three million adverts for counterfeit products were withdrawn.
Online sellers are having to become more diligent too. Vinted offers an item verification service that allows buyers to pay £10 to have experts check the authenticity of pieces by eligible brands listed at £100 or above. The pre-loved luxury site Vestiaire Collective has 90 authenticators who have verified 2.5million items since 2019 and last year halted 450,000 sales when counterfeits were detected. According to Cécile Wickmann, the senior director of luxury at Vinted, “often counterfeits are so well made that only experts with extensive experience can recognise them”.
Fashionphile uses state-of-the-art technology to verify their vintage luxury accessories
Mari Corella, who oversees eBay’s sneakers and luxury sector, says that fake trainers and handbags are the most commonly found products. The total value of fake trainers is estimated to be worth a staggering eight times the market for the real thing — primarily because they’re highly visible status symbols and easier to produce than watches and jewellery. The most counterfeited brands are Chanel, Gucci, Michael Kors and Louis Vuitton, she says — hence the demand from customers to have these items authenticated by eBay.
“Watches and sneakers have a strong resale value — they’re almost like stocks and shares,” she says. “It’s awful to discover when you come to cash one in that it’s fake.” But they’re fairly simple to spot, she says. “Because many of the authenticators have backgrounds in fashion, watchmaking and textiles, our sneakers experts can tell the real thing by its smell — they can literally sniff out a fake.” The problem is, Corella adds, as the cost of living rises, so does the demand for counterfeit products. “When wallets are tight, how do you get that product you love? Unfortunately that’s where the scammers come in.” Although it’s not illegal to buy counterfeits for your own use in the UK, anyone who knowingly sells or distributes them can face up to ten years in prison and an unlimited fine.
Sarah Davis, the founder of Fashionphile, a site selling vintage luxury accessories, has employed “state-of-the-art technology such as metal alloy analysers, x-rays and Pantone-colour assessment boxes”. Others use smart apps such as Entrupy, which allows the user to take a photograph of the fabric, leather and logo of a suspected product with a microscopic attachment to be evaluated by AI.
Results come in as little as 60 seconds, although with less obvious cases the process can take a few days. Either way, customers receive a certificate to demonstrate their items are genuine. Entrupy works with thousands of businesses including luxury and sneaker resellers, pawnshops, brands and manufacturers as well as online marketplaces including TikTok Shop and retailers across 90 countries.
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But it’s a continual game of catch-up. “Not only are the counterfeits themselves getting harder to identify,” Jake Stewart of Entrupy says, “but we’re seeing crimes such as return fraud where a person will purchase an authentic luxury good from a department store and then return a counterfeit item, because these stores don’t have the correct authentication technology in place.” Counterfeiters are smart. They might sell luxury goods without logos but offer to personalise them or add a logo. Or they might try to prevent brands from visiting their sites by blocking the brands’ IP addresses.
To increase buyer confidence, luxury houses such as LVMH, Richemont and Prada Group have joined forces to create the Aura Blockchain Consortium, a non-profit organisation that uses technology to help to protect their products. Each item will be allocated a Digital Product Passport (DPP). This, Aura’s chief executive, Romain Carrere, says “is a bridge between a physical product and its digital identity, and forges a link between the product, the owner and the brand, which preserves information about a product’s entire lifecycle, from the provenance of the raw materials to its repair history and into the pre-owned market.”
Buy a Tod’s Di Bag, for instance, and you can scan a chip under the logo with your phone. If it is genuine, you can download your bag’s DPP and learn about where, when and how the product was made.
You can’t yet demand that a luxury brand gives you a digital certificate, but more are doing it anyway. Aura has about 50 million products registered and works with more than 50 brands. With forthcoming EU regulations mandating DPPs for many products sold within Europe from 2026 onwards, the organisation sees even greater potential for its technology.
There was a time when a good-quality fake was a source of perverse pride among some consumers. But now, with the rapid growth of vintage luxury putting more of us at risk of falling for fakes and giving our money to criminal gangs, checking you’ve got the real deal has never been so important — or so easy to do.
