You’ve seen them. Haughtily perched on shoulders, hanging from coat racks, wedged underneath elbows, toted around campus: luxury handbags. And now, many of them are increasingly fake.

Just take a stroll around Rittenhouse Square, bypass the ritzy Coach and Burberry stores, and stop on the street corner, where tanned retailers ply fake sunglasses, scarves, and purses emblazoned with the logos of famous Paris fashion houses.

Why would anyone pay thousands for a luxury handbag when they can get a knockoff for a tenth of the price?

Going fake is now the smart option for cash-strapped college students as well as thrifty Wall Street professionals looking for more cash to burn on those Armani suits or Blackberry handhelds.

Yet it turns not only are most of these counterfeit items ugly, they’re also evil . C’mon you knew there was something shady about buying stuff off street corners.

According to Interpol secretary general Ronald K Noble, the proceeds from that Luis Vuitton fake that you just bagged for $20 on the corner of 14th and Market might be supporting international terrorists. Terrorist groups as infamous as Hezzbollah and FARC benefit from these informal economic transactions…as do crime rings that also traffic prostitutes, child soldiers, illegal weapons, and hard drugs.

On top of all that, we’re dealing with another set of issues when you realize that the uneven stitches on that fake Gucci wallet were produced by malnourished Laotian child laborers.

Sure, the issue isn’t as big of a deal as endowment transparency or divestment for Darfur , but the counterfeit trade is just one link in a larger chain of terror, crime, and blood.

Now, I’m not urging anyone to go out and buy the real thing: paying $5,000 for a bag is sheer
insanity. But be aware that those fakes have a dirty history behind them and choose to buy them online from reputable stores that specialize in producing them. It might cost a bit more, but it’s worth every penny.

Or, better yet, ditch the fads. Buy a bag from Target. Make your own. Find something classy in your own price range. Evading the local crime syndicates in West Philly entails not wearing too much bling around, so trade in that gaudy bag for one that isn’t a carbon copy of all the others.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.