The Death of Luxury Fashion

Investigating TikTok's Trade War: Chinese Manufacturers Claim They Can Produce $38,000 Hermès Bags for $1,000 In Response to Trump's Tariff Plans

Anytime I think about my summer vacations in Manhattan, one sound haunts me: “LOUIE LOUIE LOUIE!” (IYKYK).

Some dude hollering from the sidewalk, pointing to his messy heap of leather bags, sequined ballet flats and expired Juicy Couture perfumes. Chanted on repeat with a strong accent. The soundtrack of Big Apple chaos.

Forget Empire State Building views and rowdy Yankees games—Canal Street, the Mecca of knockoffs, was where the real adrenaline lived.​ Nothing thrilled me more than hopping off the subway and waiting for a kind Asian woman to tap my shoulder, wink, and lead me down an alley to her stash of counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags hidden in trash bags. If she didn’t have what I wanted, no problem- she had partners in crime. One would rush over with a sticky binder full of laminated pages, like some bootleg Birkin Bible. I’d flip through pages of blurry photos: Dior saddles, Gucci crossbodies, Goyards in colors not a single Parisian would approve. I’d point. She’d nod. And just like that, she’d vanish into the shadows to retrieve the one.

Sometimes I’d get told to “GTFO” mid-browse because someone was watching. There was always this low-key paranoia that NYPD was about to bust the entire operation. But I liked the risk. The tension. The idea that luxury could be lawless. Digging through garbage bags in 90-degree heat felt more comfortable than making eye contact with the snobby sales associates on Fifth Avenue.

The women of Canal Street wanted my money- sure, but at least they acted like I had some to spend. The salesgirls on Fifth looked at me like I’d taken a wrong turn on my way to the H&M clearance rack.

It didn’t matter what high-end store I walked into. It always felt like “they knew.” Knew I didn’t belong. Their tight smiles, their hesitant “Can I help you?” greetings- were code for we see you pretending. I’d drift through the marble-floored boutiques like some delusional Upper West Side socialite, until a rogue $7,000 price tag smacked me back into reality- loudly saying what the salesgirls wanted to say: “YOU DON’T BELONG.” The floor-length mirrors offered their own brutal commentary. There I was: a broke tourist from Buffalo with $80 and a sunburn. My mom didn’t collect handbags. My dad called Chanel “Channel.”

At least on Canal Street, I didn’t have to pretend.

The sidewalk salesmen made me feel seen- through their mirrored knockoff D&G lenses. That’s why I kept coming back.

A few summers ago, I stumbled across a group of Nigerian vendors on Broadway, running a similar hustle. Spread across blankets were flimsy Goyards, bedazzled Chanel totes, and more Louis Vuitton backpacks.

“LOUIE, LOUIE, LOUIE!!!” Even the Nigerians were pushing LV like it was gospel.

After examining every bag laying wide out in the open, I sent the salesman $300 on CashAPP for two bags: a CHANEL Boy Bag and a Prada Re-Edition 2005. Minus a microscopic flaw on the "P” of the Prada logo, the Re-Edition looked identical to one sold in stores. Why drop $1990 on a real bag, when you can score a fake for only $150 and help a Nigerian father feed his kids? Five minutes after my purchase, I discovered I was ripped off. The guy across the street was selling the same Prada bag for $50. Capitalism won that round.

Once I got back to Los Angeles, my Prada became my signature bag. I wore it daily. One day, my wealthy, stylish friend from high school, complimented it the second I walked in her door.

“I love your Prada,” she said. “It’s adorable!”

This was the first time she had ever acknowledged my style. For a fleeting moment, I felt seen. I was one of her.

Until I blew it.

“Thanks! It’s actually fake haha.”

She recoiled. “That’s terrible,” she said. “That’s copyright infringement.”

I was expecting props for being resourceful. Instead, I got a five-minute TED Talk on morality- about how I was parading around in stolen goods and singlehandedly destroying the fashion industry.

I wanted to yell, “Then buy me the real one!” But I didn’t. I just stood there, wrapped in silence, shame, and my fake-ass FADA.

That’s when it hit me: this wasn’t about the bag. It never was. It was about class.

She saw it as stealing. I saw it as a steal. Our morals weren’t misaligned- they were priced differently. Our perspectives were as far apart as our bank accounts.

Me, myself and my FADA

Fast forward to April 2025, and the real-vs-fake luxury goods morality war has become a global conversation.

After President Trump rolled out his tariff plans, the floodgates blew open—and in walked the Chinese manufacturers, ready to expose the fashion industry. For the first time, they let Americans in on a secret they’d been sitting on for years: allegedly, all designer bags come from the same place. According to these Chinese manufacturers turned TikTok whistleblowers, many of the so-called “fakes” are made in the exact same factories as the “real” ones. The only difference? The markup and the myth we’ve been sold.

Chinese Manufacturers Start TikTok Rumors

Last week, my friend Allie called me in a full frenzy.

“Did you know you can get an Hermès on DHgate—and it might actually be real?”

Apparently, there’s a new rumor swirling on social media: DHgate—the go-to marketplace for designer dupes—isn’t just selling fakes. They might be accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) shipping out real bags, straight from the source. According to these manufacturers, 90% of bag production starts in China- factories, materials, labor, the whole deal. Then the bags get shipped off to Italy or France for a few finishing touches, just enough to slap on a shiny little tag that says “Made in Italy” or “Made in France.”

The idea that replicas are made in the same factories as the originals isn’t new. Fashion insiders have whispered this for years. But now? Chinese manufacturers are saying it themselves- publicly, directly to Western consumers, one TikTok at a time. Some suspect this was a direct response from Chinese manufacturers after finding out that Trump’s plan for tariffs may punish the west anyways.

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The Rising Popularity of DHgate

The Canal Street experience has gone digital. You don’t need to book a trip to New York to find a quality LV dupe. Replica fashion is fully online, fully global, and fully thriving. DHgate orders that once took months to arrive from China are now arriving in under two weeks, complete with a matching box to paint the illusion of authenticity.

DHgate now carries knockoffs of indie It-Girl brands you’d never find on a sidewalk. ALAÏA’s $920 mesh ballet flats- the ones haunting every downtown Pinterest board- are going for under $100. That’s cheaper than the Jeffrey Campbells knockoff of the knockoff, which retail for $150.

Even the wealthy are embracing fakes. Fashion influencers have long championed the "high-low" strategy- pairing genuine designer pieces with the occasional replica. With a fresh manicure and professional blowout, it’s hard to tell the difference. Take my attorney, for instance. She can afford designer but opts for DHgate when prepping for vacations. For items she deems short-term- like a trendy beach tote or a statement sandal- she prefers not to splurge. It's not about deception; it's about practicality; factoring in the cost per wear. A 2022 article in The Cut highlighted affluent New York women who, despite their means, choose counterfeit Birkins over authentic ones.

A new breed of fashion influencers is redefining luxury. These digital trendsetters, unbothered by traditional notions of authenticity, are turning to platforms like DHgate to curate their personal style. Among them, fashion blogger Poorlittlerichgirlxoxo stands out, offering her followers product reviews and replica hauls on Instagram, along with an ever-updating spreadsheet of her top picks. From Balenciaga’s Phantom sneakers to Miu Miu’s Mary Janes, she orders trendy items her followers are curious about from DHgate and reports back, letting them know which ones delivered quality and which ones had funky sizing. She earns commissions from her carefully curated picks- just like the male influencer above, who told his followers to comment “SPREADSHEET” on his video to get an auto-reply with a link to the Tyler, the Creator LV backpack he was flexing. With 9,000+ comments, chances are he made a fat check on that one.

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TikTokers Celebrate the News

I started my TikTok investigation looking for answers. Concrete proof. Can these factories actually back up what they’re claiming? Will American consumers really be able to cut out the middleman and purchase authentic designer handbags—straight from the source, tags and all—for the price of a Zara swimsuit?

Instead, my For You Page became a carousel of dance videos, comedy memes and “eat the rich” rants. People twirling in their living rooms, clutching dupes like golden tickets, celebrating the idea that one day, they’ll own the same handbags the Kardashian sisters casually toss onto private jet floors.

I couldn’t help but wonder: were they celebrating a little too soon?
Counting their Chanel-branded chickens before they hatched?

The Death of Luxury Fashion

TikTok has already christened this moment The Death of Luxury Fashion.

To millions of Gen Zers and Millennials, it’s more than a trend- it’s a cultural reckoning. Luxury fashion houses, long seen as untouchable gatekeepers of taste and status, are now under attack. Loyalty? Dead. Romance? Buried. If a Chinese vendor can offer the same product for 1/20th of the price, people will take it.

After Balenciaga’s perverse November 2022 ad featuring children and teddy bears dressed in bondage gear, who’s still defending these try-hard gothic ghouls? The woke, the weary, and the recession-core fashionistas are ready to watch the luxury elite go down in flames, torching every last latex gimp mask on the way out.

Sadly, they’ve got a better chance of finding a $50 Birkin on Facebook Marketplace than getting a straight answer out of Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman, or any of the brand’s other heartless model zombies, still posing like nothing happened.

But not everyone’s clapping. Some longtime handbag collectors are spiraling. These are the people who spent years curating their collections like stock portfolios- only to find out that their $5,000 “investment pieces” might soon be indistinguishable from a $47 dupe.

Even my aunt’s breathless lecture on “copyright infringement” now feels like a relic of a different time. A time when Chanel still meant class and not just markup and marketing. She’s loyal to the fantasy. But Gen Z? They were never invited to the fantasy in the first place and they’re sick of waiting outside.

“Luxury isn’t about quality anymore, it’s about psychology.”

- Nicole Victoria aka NoBudgetBabe, TikTok

I spent a week watching this unfold. At first, it was entertaining. Even my inner anarchist got a little high off the idea of abolishing fashion’s Versailles. But the deeper I went, the more skeptical I became. Why was everyone taking this sudden flood of TikTok confessionals from Chinese manufacturers at face value?

The more I watched, the more I realized: two things can be true at once.

Yes, this could be a long-overdue disruption to an industry built on exclusion. But it could also be something darker. If Chinese manufacturers are casually admitting they have access to steal and reproduce high-end IP, what does that say about enforcement? About ethics? About the line between rebellion and straight-up theft?

This moment feels like Luigi Mangione all over again.

Social media cheered when he shot the United Healthcare CEO in the back. They didn’t see cold-blooded murder. They saw justice. To them, it wasn’t a crime. It was a course correction.

And this feels similar. The fashion houses are the villains now. The consumers are the vigilantes. Most people don’t care whose intellectual property is being stolen because they believe the entire system was built to serve the rich. And if the system collapses?

Well, then maybe justice should look like a $47 Birkin delivered right to your door.

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The Chinese Government Owns IPs

​Scott Boivie, a business school student, offers an insightful analysis of the Chinese government's robust response to President Trump's recent tariff initiatives and the potential ramifications for American businesses.​

“The Chinese Labor Bureau has been much more open about the fact that they plan on using the IP of the businesses that they have partnerships with in China. That they are no longer going to hide the fact that they’re stealing IP and are ripping off American designs and American ingenuity. That they are going to blatantly start copying American products and American technology and start selling it to the rest of the world at bargain basement prices as a result of Trump’s tariffs.

This is something they used to do very quietly. So if you open a business in China, or you use a manufacturing facility in China, you have to be in business with the Chinese government. Chinese government owns all of the production over there. So you cannot own a stand alone business as a westerner. Chinese government has access to all of your business secrets, all of your designs, all of your IP. Eventually, if they think your business is profitable enough, they will slowly start to steal your IP and replicate it to use in China and then also to sell to the rest of the world. But they have come out and basically publicly said they’re going to be much more open to what they’re doing

When Kevin O’Leary was on CNN talking about it, he said this has been one of the biggest problems with doing business with China for years because eventually they just take your work and your intellectual property and start ripping it off and selling it around the world for pennies on the dollar and drive down the value of your businesses. So that’s why he was saying that he wants tariffs to be 400%. Now that’s too much because it would collapse the US economy if Chinese tariffs were 400%.

But The World Trade Organization does not punish China enough for stealing IP even though they’re supposed to. China doesn’t respond to rulings by the WTO so that has been a global problem.

While I disagree with a lot of Trump’s tariff proposals, one of the things they’re trying to correct is this ability of China stealing IP, repackage it and sell it to the rest of the world, undercutting American companies and damaging American businesses.”

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Creators Calling Out Chinese Government Propaganda

Can we trust the information being put out by the Chinese government?

Finally, I stumbled upon a video criticizing this new wave of content coming from China. Damion Young, Damizza on social media, put out a video telling his audience to stay alert to all the alleged propaganda the Chinese government is posting on TikTok, claiming that the TikTok ban was never about censorship but rather “intellectual property warfare” and “psychological manipulation.”

The video starts with a question:

“Is the Chinese government using TikTok as the tip of the spear in the trade war?”

“While folks are laughing, dancing and vibing, a foreign government is playing chess. They’re using TikTok to flood our economy with counterfeits. Unregulated and unchecked,” he alleged. He believes that major brands may dominate the headlines, but the true casualties of counterfeiting are the small businesses and independent creators who often lack the resources to combat intellectual property theft, making them particularly vulnerable.

Young announced that he’s leaving TikTok until this gets sorted out.

“This isn’t about right or left. This is about what’s right. And right now TikTok ain’t right.”

“Until this gets handled, I cannot support a platform that actively targets small businesses, IP creators, and the country that I call home.”

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The Dark Underworld of Counterfeit Goods

The more I delve into the realities of counterfeit goods, particularly those originating from China- the very source of my faux handbags- the more I find myself reconsidering my high school friend’s lecture. Her disapproval wasn't merely about me sporting a "FADA" instead of a genuine Prada; it was rooted in a deeper concern about inadvertently supporting an international underground economy.​

Scott Boivie and Damion Young both shed light on the broader implications of counterfeiting, emphasizing that it's not just the luxury fashion houses that suffer. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are disproportionately affected, facing revenue losses and reputational damage. According to the OECD, counterfeit goods infringing on small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) intellectual property often originate from China and Hong Kong, leading to significant economic harm and even threatening the survival of these businesses. ​

Moreover, the production and sale of counterfeit items are frequently linked to organized crime, human trafficking, and other illicit activities.

If most women knew that their “perfect dupe” was probably stitched together in a sweatshop by trafficked labor, I guarantee they’d just grab a tote from Anthropologie. Then again, do we even know if Anthropologie factories are safe?

My Canal Street days are behind me.

Next time I hear someone scream, “LOUIE, LOUIE, LOUIE,” I’m ducking behind the nearest pretzel cart.

What are your thoughts on handbags? Any handbag “hoes” in the chat? Drop your fave bags below!

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Coming up next:

The Death of Luxury: Part 2: Interviews with Four Fashion and Sustainability Experts

1. Kirsten and Eddie Prosser of OnQueStyle

2. Meagan Averbuch of Style50

3. Gina Maria Garcia of Hot Mess Rescue

Part 2 will feature video interviews with four experts in different areas of the fashion industry who provide unique perspectives on what’s happening domestically & globally with the TikTok Trade War

Stay tuned and most importantly, stay alert!