The devil wears fake Dior
Isabelle Laflèche explores fashion fraud in France in J’adore Paris
Readers shopping for a fashionable beach should skip the Prada-wearing devil revival and instead, as Charlize Theron whispers in the perfume ads, j’adore dior.
In J’adore Paris, Canadian writer Isabelle Laflèche continues the breezy adventures of Catherine Lambert, an intellectual property lawyer with a taste for designer fashion. After a bestselling debut ( J’adore New York, in 2010), Catherine and her assistant have moved to the City of Light to work in the legal department of the historic house of dior. The change of country provides Laflèche with both more legal and fashion fodder. In Paris, the two industries are conveniently entwined, since fashion is considered a cultural product and there are more laws in place to protect design.
“It’s in the air, and I thought it was important,” Laflèche explains of tackling the issues around fashion fakes and counterfeit It bags. “I like to have a light side to my books, but I like people to learn things,” she adds, “to showcase what really goes on — it’s not so glamorous! To buy a $20 bag, there are implications.”
Laflèche has been back in Montreal after her own stint working as a corporate lawyer in New york — she freelances and blogs for Quebec fashion magazines such as Clin d’oeil now — but stays on top of the latest developments in trademark protection and counterfeiting law.
She also credits American counterfeiting expert Heather Mcdonald, who she interviewed extensively, with being the inspiration for some of the events in the book. As Catherine does in the book, the New york lawyer had been on back-room stakeouts and stings.
“Heather goes on raids and wears a bulletproof vest and spends a lot of time handson, in the streets of Manhattan,” Laflèche explains. “She’s well-known on Canal Street as being ‘the blond lady’ — they have pictures of her all over down there,” just as the French vendors do of Catherine in the novel.
The author lived in the 6th district during Paris Fashion Week and attended the Chanel runway show, which helped her experience the chaotic fashion milieu first-hand. even her initial arrival in Paris had a good omen: She moved into her St.-Germain apartment right across from department store Le Bon Marché, where there happened to be an exhibition of the dior archives.
Some plot elements mirror real-world events but are fictionalized. For example, dior is suing a site where vendors are able to sell fake merchandise — the online marketplace is called eShop. (Ring any bells?)
Laflèche also peppers the story with facts (e.g. clothing makes up 70% of counterfeit goods worldwide) and the findings of her historical research, which prove that in fashion as in business, there is nothing new under the sun: dior was already prosecuting fakes back in 1948.
“Being copied is the ransom of success,” Christian dior’s rival Coco Chanel had declared, nearly 30 years before. That explains Paris’s Musée de la Contrefaçon (literally, the counterfeiting museum). “Clearly the luxury market is such a big export for France that they thought it was important to educate consumers!”
Although they’re perennial, the ethical issues raised in J’adore Paris seem especially timely this summer. Laflèche writes of how in France, the act of buying or even wearing counterfeit goods is as illegal as selling them; just as the book was arriving in stores earlier this month, New york City Council member Margaret Chin introduced legislation that, if passed, would similarly fine fake buyers with $1,000 or up to a year in prison, to crack down on Chinatown’s illicit bag trade.
While well-intentioned, the proposed bill is one Laflèche thinks would be hard to enforce especially since (like it or not) the Canal Street counterfeit emporium is a major tourist destination. “Is the police going to run around and chase tourists down the street? There’s an intent, also — did the lady know she was buying fake Gucci? Presumably, she did. But how do you prove that?
“I think the consumer does have some part of responsibility,” she concedes. “If you can’t afford ‘the real thing’ then I think just buy, I think the fashion world offers so many varied choices, you can have a nice bag at a reasonable price. If you can’t afford a $2,000 bag, find one you can afford. There are plenty of nice things in the world.”
Laflèche also touches on the controversy around underage models with a subplot about yulia, a 15-year-old ingenue from Bulgaria, who is pressured in a number of ways. “There’s a lot out there about Photoshop, and fashion photographers exploiting underage models. I could have written a lot more but I just wanted to make my point.” The author is considering a spinoff young adult series about that world.
But first, Laflèche is planning the next instalment of Catherine’s adventures with a research trip to India, J’adore Mumbai. Although, she jokes dryly, “with the news this morning about our mayor being arrested, I have some material if I ever want to do J’adore Montreal now!”