Funny Fake

eBay made me spit out my tea onto my keyboard this morning.  I blame my daily routine of just pounding designer names into that search box.  Came to Marni (used Marni shoes come up trumps ALL the time on eBay) and the first thing that popped up was this unbelievable listing, hailing from…. yup – you guessed it….China. 

I sounded out the possibility of Christophe Kane’s dresses being stolen by bandits who would take them to factories in China reproduce them on the cheap to sell on eBay for a neat sum of $79.99.  I’m definitely not far off when I see one of Kane’s AW07-8 leather and velvet dresses reproduced and sold by a seller based in Hong Kong by the name of ‘wangshiruyi666’.  Now you know you’ve made it to the big time when the factories start spinning out the eBay knock-offs.  Of course the eBay bandits would take note of a designer in their third season who has been hotted all over the press.  Naturally a fake homage was in the pipeline.  I can almost smell the pleather on the dress.  This is as random and wrong on so many levels as they come….      

The eBay seller’s photoshopped catwalk picture sans belt // The real deal

Hilariously, the dress was listed as ‘Bran-new MARNI dress’.  Kane’s body-con ruffled leather and velvet skater-skirted dress couldn’t be LESS like Marni and perhaps the seller was so confused in their rapid listing of Marni knock-offs, that he mis-listed the dress.  I also love the way the seller has Photoshopped out the belt that was originally shown with the dress on the catwalk to helpfully point out to potential buyers that the faux-dress sadly does not come with a Swarovski belt.  There was a Buy it Now price of $79.99 and during the time it has taken me to type this post, it has now actually been snapped up (I pray to god that the person buying it didn’t ACTUALLY think she/he had happed upon a bargain of the century).  It’s loopy, I tell you, absolute loopiness…. 

23 comments

  1. I love that the name’s misspelled (“wanshiruyi”…). I also love that we’ll probably be seeing that same fake dress in the bulk clothing stalls of Sham Shui Po next week.

  3. Yes, eBay’s got some beauties! I’ve just about given up buying anything designer there.
    It does make it hard for those of us selling the real deal, though, when we have to compete with $25 “guaranteed authentic” Louis Vuitton bags and $80 Marni (could ANYONE think this was Marni?) leather dresses.

  4. People are so foolish. “If it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be true,” is my motto. Do they really think they’re gonna get an LV for $25?

  5. This is a serious infringement and one that we should try to shut down. I’ve written to the e-bay and encourage others to do so. E-Bay has an intellectual property protection program that applies to garments. I cannot find an e-mail address for Christopher Kane’s cmpany but if someone has it and will forward him the e-baqy listing with a note to contact e-bay, then we can be of use. What say you?

  6. eBay IS pretty good at shutting things down. I had a hobby of reporting fake LV stuff for a while (usually things where the bidding was going really high and someone was going to get screwed).

  7. The mind boggles over this. I don’t know what i’m more confused by, the fact that people are willing to shell out 79.99 (which isn’t terribly cheap) for fake Christopher Kane or that it is labeled Marni. I mean, really?

  8. The mind boggles over this. I don’t know what i’m more confused by, the fact that people are willing to shell out 79.99 (which isn’t terribly cheap) for fake Christopher Kane or that it is labeled Marni. I mean, really?

  9. Well, this person is also not selling anything else. And has very little feedback, which I mean, any starting out person would. But theres this negative feedback comment
    “Dress not authentic! Cheap dress with iron-on ladybug. Seller won’t refund.”
    that should have been enough I think.

  10. Damn…that’s all I have to say. I’m speechless about this. Someone does need to contact Kane’s camp.

  11. Yikes!! This reminds me of the Courtney Love article I saw in Harper’s Bazaar (US edition) where she talks about showing up wearing that horrendous looking fake Chanel at Lindsay Lohan’s bday party. I actually just wrote about the copyright issues in the US fashion industry in my blog so check it out if you are interested. It’s still very much an ongoing issue, as you can imagine…

  13. this is really sad…oh and courtney love’s fake Chanel dress – wasn’t that the occasion for Karl Lagerfeld de-friending her for years?? that was funny.

  14. OMG! i saw this listing whilst searching for marni too. i shared it with my friend, it was hilarious. i can’t believe it

  15. I do not see the correlation between Marni and Christopher Kane. I really don’t. Especially with cheap, fake, and illegal Kane.

  16. I’ve seen this before on ebay, it was a dress described as being Anna Sui, with a (fake) tag and everything, but it was a Chanel knockoff, however they didn’t even bother to photoshop out the giant Chanel logo on the floor of the runway photo!

  17. 6zhongshenmeili6 sells fakes too. and yet people just keep buying. and reselling. be careful. it absolutely sucks.

  18. just wanted to add another boggled mind to the list. sort of an awe for the new weird machines at work on all this. sort of sadness for the designer.

  19. should have said too. that dress is killer gorgeous. i want it. the real one. not only does it look amazing but i looks like the real thing would feel amazing on.

  22. latest issue of modette had a strange feauture about having a tailor copy a kane dress. without any moral doubts or anything. i found it strange. the thing with the ebay copy is i consider the possibility of getting my own mits on it, all my rights & wrongs washes away with the shampoo!

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