Counter Moves

What is the real cost of wearing a fake?

Iarrive at what appears to be a vacant storefront near Toronto’s Wychwood neighbourhood. The windows are papered over, and there’s no sign on the door. But the door is unlocked, so I tentatively enter a room lined with large plastic bins crammed with a veritable Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory selection of designer goods: fur-lined Gucci mules, crystal-encrusted Christian Louboutins and a rainbow’s worth of Valentino “Rockstud” pumps. A narrow corridor leads to another room with floor-toceiling shelves overcrowded with Chanel, Saint Laurent and Céline purses. None of them are the real thing. To gain access to this secret depot of luxury fakes, you need to be referred by a previous customer. Ava*, a 27-yearold entrepreneur who has been shopping here for the past two years, told me about the place. I’m not the only one here on this rainy Thursday afternoon. A mother urges her daughter to decide which Chanel bag she likes best. Across the room, a woman is trying on shoes with the proprietor of the business, a tanned blond who appears to be in her early 40s. I recall the conversation I had with Ava about her. “I don’t know her name,” she told me. “We all have her in our phones as ‘Bag Lady.’”

The quality of counterfeit products has always ranged from bags that practically scream “Channel” beneath interlocking Cs to borderline-indistinguishable Hermès fakes that cost $2,000 (instead of $20,000 for the real deal). The goods on offer at the Bag Lady’s store range between $350 and $1,500—a fake Louis Vuitton tote, for example, will run you close to $700. According to Rania Sedhom, a lawyer with the Bespoke Law Firm in New York who counts Moda Operandi and The Luxury Marketing Council among her clients, some counterfeiters today can produce fakes that are good enough to elicit a double take, instead of an eye roll, from discriminating purse hounds. They typically buy the original designer bag first,