The Black Market Turning “Stealth Wealth” & “Quiet Luxury” Upside Down

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The world of status symbols and all their various manifestations (“quiet luxury,” “stealth wealth,” and even conspicuous dressing down as a backhanded sign of prestige) has operated in a more or less predictable way over the course of history—until now.

Amy X. Wang, whose reporting for the New York Times uncovered a replica black market that’s exploded in popularity in recent years, joins me to discuss.

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Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is our Chief Content Officer and additional fact checking comes from Kate Brandt.

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Transcript

Transcript

Tanner Leatherstein:

This is [the] Louis Vuitton Neverfull. My estimate for leather is going to be a $100 for accessories and assembly. I give it about $160 to put this bag together. In total, it shouldn't be more than $260 to make a bag similar to this one. I paid little over $2,700 for this bag.

Katie:

That's a guy who goes by the name Tanner Leatherstein on the TikTok. He's a craftsman with a self-described lifelong love of leather (same, Tanner). And in the video clip that you just heard, he was mercilessly taking a pair of shears to a Louis Vuitton bag that retailed for $2,700 and he was assessing the material. How much is this really worth? $260, he concluded, deducing the brand, charged 10 times its own cost to manufacture it.

Now many of you hearing this are probably thinking one thing: I knew it. Luxury goods are a total ripoff. What kind of moron would spend that much money on a handbag?

But if you've been around this moron for a while, you know that I spent $1,300 on the Louis Vuitton Neverfull, approximately eight minutes after receiving my first full-time job offer. Yeah, not my first paycheck. The offer. Your girl has come a long way.

But this world of status symbols is incredibly rich, no pun intended, with complicated rules and psychological layers. Humans are status signaling animals. We make aesthetic choices all the time and commit money accordingly in order to communicate certain messages about ourselves. And lest you think that I'm the only person on team Money with Katie with a guilty pension for spending too much on handbags…

What did you treat yourself to last year?

Henah:

I treated myself to a vintage Chanel bag.

Katie:

What made you want to buy a vintage Chanel bag? Why was that special to you?

Henah:

It's funny; if you know me, you know I'm not really into brand names. I think that's a common thing people know about me. But when I was 18, it was my 18th birthday, I went into a Chanel store with my brother in Hawaii, and I remember this so vividly. And I was holding that Chanel wallet that had the floral pattern on it. I don't if you know what I'm talking about. But it was $800 for a wallet basically. And I remember being like, wow, it's so beautiful, but it's $800. I can't justify spending that much; one day when I can afford this, maybe I'll buy something Chanel. And for some reason, Chanel has been the only brand that I've truly ever wanted a luxury piece from. And so then when I got a bonus last year, I went through the mental gymnastics of justifying that this was the time that I should treat myself because I had worked so hard for it.

Katie:

How does it feel now?

Henah:

Hilariously, I don't feel any different. It sits near my front door and I've used it maybe three times because I'm scared to take it out of the house. And I love it. I love knowing that it's there, but there's still a piece of me that's like, is it real? Is it fake or real?

Katie:

Really? You are questioning its authenticity?

Henah:

It's not that I think that I've been duped, because I did so much research and I checked all the pleats and the how many stitches were within each little square, and I looked at how the logo was sitting and it came with a box and the authentication card and whatever. But I think because the industry is now run amok with a lot of dupes, I didn't want to feel like I was taken advantage of by paying so much for our bag that might be fake.

Katie:

Granted, this is a sample size of two, but in the personal finance world, we are in the minority.

YouTube clip:

The majority of millionaires aren't found in flashy neighborhoods. Instead, they're likely your neighbors living modestly. In average communities savoring a simple life. They don't wear designer clothes…

Katie:

Stealth wealth. It's a popular concept in the personal finance world. And the idea is that real rich people don't look the way that you think they do. They don't spend money on labels. And some interpretations of this belief suggest a sort of reverse causality that they're rich because they don't spend money on these things. And unfortunately, it's not so straightforward. Now, it's true that rich people don't dress the way we think they do, but it's because they're carefully telegraphing something imperceptible to our plebeian eyes. Forget Louis Vuitton and Chanel and Rolex. If you have heard of the brand, they are probably not wearing it.

At this point, writes the Financial Times, dressing down is a status symbol and becoming more or less an obvious one. And you know what I say? I say tell that to the ThinkBoiz on Twitter going rabid for Bill Gates in a plain quarter zip. What do you think Bill Gates is going to wear, Jared? Do you think he's going to walk out the door in a head to toe Gucci sweatsuit? No. And that's the entire point. Logos are for poors.

Welcome back to The Money with Katie Show, Rich Humans. I'm your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and today we are talking class signaling, so-called Stealth Wealth, its sister trend quiet luxury, and the underground shadow segment of the luxury market that's shaking up the rules and turning everything inside out.

And we'll be right back after a quick break.

So dear listener, let me ask you a question. How does one look rich? Those with real money, the Financial Times reports, perform a sort of moneyed nonchalance. Now a rich person, a regular rich person, might carry a Birkin bag, the infamous Hermès crown jewel that costs upward of $10,000 and requires that you first ingratiate yourself to a sales associate in order to be invited to buy one, which is why Hermès is now embroiled in a lawsuit. But an opulently wealthy person like one Mary-Kate Olsen lugs around a beat-to-shit Birkin bag that is literally coming apart at the seams. This conspicuous wear and tear communicate something very specific to a regular rich person. A $10,000 handbag would be something to protect and maintain, but when you treat it like quote, “the briefcase of a used car salesman” as Olson does, according to Vogue, it's even more of a flex. In other words, when your $10,000 handbag isn't even a prized possession of yours. You can't even be bothered to take care of it. Now you're really signaling status.

Another example comes from the 1999 film, the Talented Mr. Ripley, the rich and spoiled millionaire, Playboy main character wears tattered Gucci loafers and carelessly creased bespoke suits. And maybe unsurprisingly, the same costume designer who appointed Dickie Greenleaf's curated apathy in the Talented Mr. Ripley also led wardrobe selection on none other than the more recent hit Succession. Succession, this HBO drama, reignited the love of the oft-misunderstood old money aesthetic and quiet luxury trends on TikTok. It featured main characters who are worth billions of dollars, whose lack of logos or ostentatious wealth signaling became a sort of subplot for voyeuristic viewers. But make no mistake, Kendall Roy's plain black hat did not come from the Gap. The Loro Piana ball cap will set you back $605.

And it is true. I don't know how to say Loro Piana, I can't be convinced that I'm saying it correctly right now, but I can't be bothered to check. The point is: Money talks, wealth whispers in a frequency that's only perceptible to those in the know and they want it that way. In that context, choices that are widely recognizable as expensive, like my Louis Vuitton Neverull, a handbag so ubiquitous, you can hardly enter any middle class suburban grocery store without encountering like 46 of them. It's like performing rich person drag. Paradoxically, it's almost like I'm wearing a $1,300 sign that says, “Hey, I'm LARPing rich person, and I spent my entire paycheck on this canvas billboard.” By the final season of Succession, this subtext became text, the infamous ludicrously capacious bag that Greg's date brings to a family meeting. She brings this Burberry tote that's made of the recognizable Burberry plaid material that retails for around 2,500 GBP became a plot point.

Succession clip (Tom):

So I hear you've made an enormous faux pas and everyone's laughing up their sleeves about your date. Why? Why? Because she's brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What? What's even in there? Huh? Flat shoes for the subway? Or her lunch pail? I mean, Greg, it's monstrous, it's gargantuan…

Katie:

How embarrassing, Tom seemed to say, to announce your wealth so plainly, which is especially rich if you're familiar with the plot of Succession because Tom is kind of a newcomer to this wealthy world. And so he as the enforcer of these norms, it's an interesting consideration overall.

It communicates that merely affording luxury goods is the easy part. Anyone can spend thousands of dollars on their outfit in this upper crust. True status is about communicating in a language that is only legible to some people. Loro Piana, for its part, the brand that I don't know how to say, was a little-known luxury brand firmly in the camp of for people so much richer than me that I had literally never heard of it until recently. But it first entered my scope of awareness because the billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, he makes these semi frequent references to his love of Loro Piana cashmere goods on his podcast All In, which is a real billionaire who's who.

It begs the question, does his saying this quiet part out loud invalidate some unwritten rule? Is it still understated…If you are plainly stating it, like all the time? In late 2023, New York Magazine explored the answer to that question: “With the buzz comes a paradox. Thanks to the extra visibility, Laura Piana risks undermining the very value proposition that has endeared it to its deep pocketed clientele. It's quiet cachet. If it becomes too recognizable,” its wealthy customers will move on to the next.

Similarly, Gwyneth Paltrow’s, I would say it's probably safe to call them underwhelming, casual courthouse looks during her ski crash trial inspired breathless headlines claiming that she dressed brilliantly for court; that the style was peak Gwyneth. Justice was serving, fans declared. Your Honor, she was wearing a beige turtleneck by none other than whom Loro Piana, baby. She became the poster child for stealth wealth fashion, for billionaire chic, and a casual observer of these courtroom photos might notice there is really nothing all that unique about her plain cream sweaters and oversized gray suit.

In that sense, it's hard to separate the overall aura and vibe of this conventionally attractive, very wealthy person and the circumstances of the photos from the fashion itself. She was on trial, she was being sued for $300,000, but her outfits conveyed a sense of being perennially unbothered. Fashion Magazine dubbed it “coastal grandmother”, and the Daily Mail estimated her day two outfit was worth $67,000. I observed the whole ordeal via my preferred language of communication, AKA memes, and found the discourse around it fascinating. While a minority of people pointed out her looks were incredibly vanilla and plain, the majority reached a verdict that she slayed. Whether we were consciously aware of it or not, we—the anesthetized masses guzzling our daily dose of Gwyneth all trial long—clocked the message that she was silently sending us, I'm too rich for this. And this is the masterful sleight of hand, right? Trying very hard to look as though you are not trying at all.

So quick vibe check. If this episode so far is inducing feelings of like “who cares, eat the rich” in you, you're in good company. Though I have to admit there is something contradictory about billionaire chic being an en vogue aesthetic during this particular cultural moment. As we've pointed out on the show before, wealth inequality has officially surpassed that of the Gilded Age, with just 18 families controlling 1.35% of the entire country's wealth. Two in three Americans believe wealth inequality is a serious national issue and roughly half think that wealth accumulation should be capped. So in this broader economic context, the love of quiet luxury and aspiration toward billionaire chic feels positively divergent to me. I would think that, given the sad state of affairs, you would think French revolution chic would be the trend sweeping the nation, little guillotine charm bracelets and Marie Antoinette collar and Robespierre hot pants.

But I don't know, maybe we, the masses, are drawn to this understated stealth wealth aesthetic because it consciously or not makes us feel as though we are somehow more connected to this status that is just plainly unattainable to us. They're rich, they're just like us. If our plain ball caps also cost $600.

In this way, the trends and fashions that characterize certain periods of time are quite illustrative of and almost inextricable from the microcultures that produce them: the hippie style of the 1970s, the importance of expressing individuality in the 80s, the grunge of the 90s. What does it say about the 2020s that we're going feral for plain turtlenecks? It feels to me almost like we're reaching for anything to narrow the gap that we might subconsciously feel between us and the elites. Something to make us feel in control. And part of this group that is insulated from the problems that affect normal people, the people who can wear combat boots to court whilst being sued for 300 grand.

And these brands represent a favorite of investors too. CNBC pointed out recently that investors love these high-margin brands that fall into this quiet luxury camp because their consumers are so very price insensitive. For your typical Hermès shopper, your typical Loro Piana, turtleneck wearer, $3,000 for a shirt isn't probably going to be all that dissuaded by an economic downturn, because for them, their four and five figure leather goods and cashmere outfits are the proportional equivalent of me loading up on Costco sweatpants.

There is one thing that might threaten these brand's dominance though, and it's not the risk of becoming passe. In the last couple of years, the replica luxury black market has mushroomed in subreddits and hush hush TriBeCa penthouses. Strangely, some of the biggest customers are women who can and do afford the real versions of these knockoffs. A new status symbol emerges knowing how to navigate the complicated trapdoor-laden world of replica fashion. If any rich person can get their hands on the authentic real thing, the bigger flex is being able to get a deal on an indiscernible replica. Houston, we have officially entered the upside down

Amy X Wang's 2023 reporting for the New York Times uncovered the unique attributes of this world, namely that the supply chain is so disconnected that most parts operate independently of one another, and this makes cracking down incredibly difficult. You might discover the person who's shipping the bags to the United States, but even they don't know where the factory is. Online lovers of replica fashion huddle on subreddits to discuss their rep hauls, sometimes posting pictures of up to a dozen Chanel bags that are completely indistinguishable from the real thing. They have serial numbers and authentication cards and clone the real thing down to the stitch. The largest subreddit /repladies had 200,000 members when it was shut down. And another quickly emerged under another name /repladiesdesigner, which now has more than 90,000 members.

Sangeeta Singh Kurtz reported for New York Magazine that there's a cabal of rich Upper East Side women who sell these reps out of their TriBeCa penthouses like knockoff Hermès Tupperware parties. They pass names of reputable sellers and hushed tones at brunches and school board meetings. And as part of her reporting, Sangeeta purchased a superfake Gucci bag of which the authentic version retails for $2,500. She spent $200 bucks, she took it to an upscale consignment store and after a few minutes of tense quick inspection, the clerk offered her $1,100 for it.

Authenticators for popular secondhand luxury fashion websites admitted to Amy under the condition of anonymity that it was becoming so difficult for them to gauge authenticity that they often spent hours looking up photos online and comparing minute details, ultimately unable to be totally sure of their items’ origin. Amy joins us today to tell us more about what she found and ultimately what she makes of it. Right after a quick break.

Amy, welcome to The Money with Katie Show. Thanks so much for being here.

Amy X. Wang:

Thanks for having me. This is wonderful.

Katie:

So your reporting led you to an interesting place, Guangzhou, China, where the majority of the world's super fakes are thought to originate. I'm curious how these things even ended up on your radar because knockoffs, counterfeits, these things have been around for a long time, pretty much as long as you've been able to buy luxury goods. So what in your opinion made these different than the kind of counterfeit luxury items that you can buy from vendors on Canal Street?

Amy X. Wang:

I would say that I first came across the idea that the super fake handbag or the incredibly realistic knockoff sometime in the early period of pandemic when everybody was online all the time, scrutinizing consumer purchases that could bring them just the tiniest glimmer of happiness. And when I encountered this, I think it was in a subreddit, someone mentioning you can buy a Chanel bag now for however much, let's say $200, and it looks exactly the same. My sort of curiosity was peaked on a both journalistic level, how could this possibly be the case, and also a personal level of, well, I love clothes and I would also love a deal. So let me try and chase this down.

Why is this happening in Guangzhou, and how did I sort of steer into it? And the answer is that all the online funnels of rabbit holes that I went down basically took me to the fact that all this manufacturing was being done in China, and that it was still going on in the pandemic despite most of the world locking down, the super fake industry was sort of continuing to roll on and produce a bunch of these incredibly realistic knockoffs shipping to people individually, essentially undetectable across borders and into the hands of shoppers anonymously on the internet, sourcing these things and being privately delighted and sharing this big secret.

Katie:

How did they manage to manufacture such identical replicas?

Amy X. Wang:

The beauty of the story actually was that it led me to this incredible realization, that a luxury bag is actually quite simple when it comes down to it. If you think about it, most of them are quite simplistic silhouettes with sort of geometric shapes and maybe one or two distinguishing features like a buckle here or a gold clasp, this particular color. So the fact that this is easily replicable, it sounds crazy at first, but once you think about it, all you really need is to study an image or a 3D model or perhaps just one single bag up close to be able to redo it. And that's a lot of the manufacturing secret, secret to the super fakes, that you can actually just have one real luxury bag and kind of use it as a sample or as a template and remake it again and again. Regarding the actual materials, a lot of the super fake sellers, it turns out actually can source from the same leather markets in, for instance, Italian leather markets or online as the real companies do.

So it's not like a certain type of leather is exclusive to Hermès or exclusive to Dior, right? You can actually buy that stuff wholesale and then you can buy the buckles, the sort of authentication cards and the little details and all of it can be mimicked to a T. And I guess that actually isn't very surprising in an age of incredibly simple reproduction across SHEIN and Alibaba and Amazon. So it's just another version of that, but maybe taking a bit more care and studying the stitches a little bit longer. So it's like dupe culture amplified and very meticulous.

Katie:

It's so funny to tie it back to dupe culture. I hadn't really even thought about that, but you're right, in some ways it's the most glaring manifestation of it. So how much cheaper are they? I mean, can you give us an example of the price of a real version of what these most coveted bags might fetch if you were to wander into a Chanel store or an Hermès store and then what I could go and hop on WhatsApp and get a replica for?

Amy X. Wang:

Yeah. Well, in a Chanel boutique, I actually haven't checked the prices in the last few months, so I'm sure they've already got up since then. But I believe the classic Chanel double flap is around $10,000 sans tax, pre-tax, $10,000. And on WhatsApp you can secure a sort of middle quality, a good enough passable replica bag for around maybe $150, $200 and you could get a sort of what is referred to as a high tier bag that has an incredible degree of accuracy for around $300. Or I've seen the case for a $500 or $600 replica that is promised to be so accurate that no boutique could ever question it, or is so accurate that you could return it to Nordstrom and commit actual fraud. And I guess the pricing is all the fact that the pricing is all done by these kind of shady figures in their own gray market or black market really highlights the absurdity of the price of it altogether. If the $300 price is so artificial, then this $10,000 price is kind of equally made up.

Katie:

I mean it does feel quite arbitrary and the conclusion that you drew in your reporting was so fascinating to me. You kind of get to this existential question of what does it even mean to be real then; what is really differentiating the authentic bag from the fake one if they're made from the same materials? And yeah, it's really fascinating. So we both referenced WhatsApp now twice kind of in passing, and I can imagine someone listening to this and going, wait, what is that? Where is WhatsApp coming into this? So can you walk us through the standard purchase process? I assume people are not visiting a public website, they're not navigating superfake.com. There is a bit of a, you have to be a little in the know here.

Amy X. Wang:

Yeah, there's a bit of the kind of secret you need to be online element to it, but actually you don't need to be that online. So basically there are a couple of sort of, well-known amongst buyers, well-known super fake sellers who maybe have specific names and their names kind of come up over and over, if you look up Reddit forums or if you just sort of look on purse forums or there are various other social media spaces where these conversations happen. I would also say that Instagram has been a huge leader of getting people into super fakes. Apparently there are quite a few Instagram ads or accounts that just sort of randomly tag people and they look like spam generally, but they sort of lure people in by getting them to click through. And a lot of them just are sort of accounts with WhatsApp numbers attached to them.

But it really is as simple as honestly just Googling like “Chanel bag for cheap” or whatever it is. And within a couple of clicks you're essentially just there. You find some sort of source of information or a phone number or something, and then you message someone on WhatsApp and they basically often send catalogs or ask what are you looking for specifically? It feels really, really scammy if you're sort of not looking for it intentionally. But if you are looking for it intentionally, then it's exactly what you're looking for. Of course there's a degree of trust like this person across the computer from you. It could just be absolutely scamming you and asking you to send a certain amount of money in exchange for the promise of a bag being delivered to your doorstep in three or four weeks. That may never materialize. And that's where the Reddit forums and Discord chats come in of people sharing trusted sellers or favorite sellers that they can rely on.

Katie:

Oh my God. So it's not that you need some encrypted connection to the dark web, you could literally Google “Chanel bag for cheap” and start to go down these WhatsApp rabbit holes.

Amy X. Wang:

Yeah, exactly.

Katie:

That's wild, man. So to go back to this question of what's real, what's fake, what really differentiates, I can imagine that if I'm the CEO of Hermès and everyone's carrying around these super fake Birkin bags, that is a bit of a crisis for my brand where my whole value proposition is exclusivity and the fact that people can't get this back. Now there are lawsuits that claim that actually the way Hermès even sells this bag isn't kosher. So I'm curious where you land on this threshold of the real/fake, that blurriness, because even as you've alluded to, you can buy one of these bags and then if you're spending the $500 to $600 for the one that is so high fidelity, you could go and pass that off as a real bag and sell that to someone else unsuspecting. And there's really no tell, there's no way for them to know that it's not real. I'm curious where you land on that distinction between real and fake, and I don't know if your reporting turned up any insight into how common even that element, that fraud element of this might be?

Amy X. Wang:

Yeah, you get into a lot of really interesting points about the ethics of buying a fake bag versus the actual objective reality of carrying one around and not being able to have other people suss out that it's a fake bag, right? Because it's one thing to walk around and just fool the socialites around you or the rich people at a party around you that you are one of them and it's another to be contributing to potentially elicit or harmful labor practices or all these other things that are tied into black markets or that are suspected to be tied into black markets. I feel like this distinction actually does come up quite often amongst super fake bad buyers, too. If you go into the forums, there is a lot of interesting moral thinking about what is really going on. And there's also a lot of thinking about what it's doing to corporations and to brands like you mentioned what it's doing to the Hermès CEO.

I would say that the popular thought is LVMH, Hermès, these companies are billion dollar sort of whales, and no one is being harmed by the production of super fakes who is not already the owner of a super yacht themselves. So the argument is like this is actually subversive and sticking it to the man to be buying a fake bag because you're not contributing to the pockets of billionaires who live their lavish lives and don't know what you're doing anyway. And it's also as the world becomes more and more unaffordable, I'm talking about common groceries, I'm talking about shoes and handbags of course, but also just the cost of living. I think people are using this as a way of voicing their frustration, sort of like a delicious cheat code or a secret that you've got something valuable that has tremendous value to other people, but you actually didn't pay a lot for it. So it's like the universal appeal of the deal or the crazy coupon or buying a business class trip with credit card points or hacking your way.

Katie:

Nothing better. I remember we did that once and my husband, we got on board and he's like, I feel like we're robbing them. It really is. It's the best feeling.

Amy X. Wang:

I mean, exactly. So it feels kind of like you're doing something illicit and in the case of these bags, you obviously are actually doing something illicit, but it's that feeling where you're chasing this absolute delicious secret that you were able to pull off a heist of some sort.

Katie:

Yeah. Well, you know what, that was kind of surprising to me about what you found in your reporting that your clientele, I mean the sense that many of the super fake dealers and buyers in the US are women who are wealthy to the point that many of them also own the real thing too. And that really struck me as a shift in what we consider a status symbol because there was this sense that I got at least amongst this socioeconomic class that is that, well, anyone can spend $15,000 on a Birkin, but what's really cool is having that inside track on the super fake—being that it's almost like punk rock to know the guy who knows the guy who can get you the bag that could fool the Hermès showroom into thinking it's real, getting the best replica.

And so I don't want to extrapolate too far beyond the bounds of luxury leather goods here, but it doesn't seem like too much of a coincidence that this is happening in this particular moment. And I'm sure you're familiar with the trends that we've talked about earlier in this episode, the quiet luxury and the stealth wealth and kind of the Succession fashion of it all where there is something interesting to being, I don't want to say more covert about your wealth, but this, I'm curious how that lands for you and if there are any connections that you see between those concurrent phenomena.

Amy X. Wang:

Absolutely. There is a common thread of everything you mentioned like stealth wealth, quiet luxury, what it means to be wealthy versus just cosplay is wealthy or to be wealthy and hide it. An incredible thing that I found while reporting the story is that through a year of observation of these super fake buyer communities, a lot of the women are, they basically spend the gamut. A lot of the women are lower middle class or have stories of coming from situations of debt or poverty and sort of always coveting a bag, whether it's a specific bag or just luxury bags in general. They're like, wow, I wish I could have had that, or I wish I could and I could never afford it. And then they discover super fakes and it's sort of this incredible empowering moment for them almost where they're like, actually, I can be a part of this world that I thought was so elusive and inaccessible.

So that's one part of it. But then there are also these women who definitely already belong to that world, like the housewives on Madison Avenue or the CEOs of companies who then discover super fakes and are still interested in them because it's such a great deal. I've encountered stories of women who have millions of dollars in the bank, but they'll still buy the fake Cartier bangle or the fake Hermès Birkin, because they don't want to actually ruin their real Birkin by carrying it around, or they want eight of them in different colors, and that would cost way more than eight super fakes in different colors. You're almost like taking money out of the equation in a way, or how much money you have in your own background, and you're essentially just assessing it from the standpoint of what can this item get me in the world? And it's so interesting that it's very universal, right? Everybody kind of wants to chase this easy way of signaling to the world that they have something that others covet. And then within the super fake buyers, you also get a lot of conflict sometimes in conversations about which bag is the most stealth luxury.

If you carry around the Louis Vuitton bag with a ton of logos on it, then it's almost seen sometimes as lower status in the class of high status than the more Bottega bag that you have to know is a Bottega bag to understand.

Katie:

Oh my gosh, it's so layered. It honestly cracks me up. It just has me thinking too so much about the financial aspect of this from the standpoint of there is something about being so wealthy that you have a real Birkin and then deciding I'm going to buy a fake one to carry around. It's almost like sometimes women will buy really big fake diamond rings to where in lieu of their real diamond ring, not because they can't afford the real thing, but because they don't want to take the real thing on the trip or whatever. But there is an assumption that it is real because the way that this person carries themselves, or if you know that they have money, you are aware that this person has money, you would never expect them to have the fake thing.

So there's almost this benefit of the doubt that you're granted at that level. So it's interesting to see how this functions in different social classes and how you've been able to glean all of this from the subreddits. I actually went to find that original /RepLadies subreddit and saw that it had been shut down. I think that there were more than 200,000 people in it, and it was shut down. Do you know anything about that?

Amy X. Wang:

I don't believe it was shut down by Reddit. I think the moderators closed it down themselves after seeing how much sort of traction it was getting because they didn't want it to be too exposed. But actually, there are a lot of substitutes that have cropped up on Reddit. They have different names, and they're typically private and they're a little smaller, and they're also a bunch of Discord communities because Discord is a little obviously less public and less stringent than Reddit with its new set of more strict codes is, and you just have to do a little bit more digging. But the conversations do still exist. I would say they probably have gotten even more populous as more and more people find out about super fakes. But you're right, it's no longer collected in one central forum, so it's a little harder to suss out.

Katie:

I think I found one of the subreddits that replaced it /RepLadiesDesigner, and I actually don't know how I got targeted with this particular community on Reddit, but immediately I was immersed.

Amy X. Wang:

You see? Exactly. It's so easy to find that you weren't even looking for it.

Katie:

It ended up on my homepage somehow, and then I went looking for information about these replicas. I was like, wait, what is this? And then that led me to find all these different stories that had been written about it like your own. And yeah, I mean, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been commenting on some of it being like, oh, you got a pink Kelly for $300. Okay, yeah. Let's see. Is that still available? I mean, it's hard not to because you, yes, you feel like you've gained access to this world that you formerly wouldn't have had access to. So I actually really though enjoyed your description of how it feels to partake in this luxury world. I think it's why it is alluring in this mysterious relationship that we humans have with status symbols. You wrote that you had purchased the designer handbag during the pandemic and that you would wear it to these celebrity flooded parties in Manhattan, finding yourself preening under the approving welcome into our fold smiles of wealthy strangers, and that there is this sort of superiority that comes along with these bags and that you were surprised to find that that was also the case with the super fakes.

But I think it's funny in this world where the fakes are kind of indistinguishable from the real thing. I mean, ever since I read your piece and others covering the same thing, I will see a woman with a Birkin bag on a plane and go, that's probably not real. I probably wouldn't be stuffing my Birkin bag under the seat in front of me. I mean, not an economy class that is. So do you think that the luxury brands are going to be stripped of some of their cult status? Do you foresee a world wherein some of this stuff becomes ubiquitous, or do you think it's fringe enough that there will always still be people willing to pay $20,000 for the real thing?

Amy X. Wang:

I think that we're already seeing luxury brands stripped of cult status in what we just talked about of trends of stealth wealth, quiet luxury people like the Olsen twins and their brand, the Row; that's the entire ethos of Loro Piana and the Row and cashmere clothes that are so nondescript that they look like there should be a hundred dollars but are actually $5,000. The really, truly, very wealthy people don't want to be carrying around a bag that clearly denotes what it is. That's the sort of interesting secret. They don't want to look that rich. They don't want to be targets. It's only people who have never been able to access that level of wealth that do want to look that rich. So it's not like luxury brands are becoming passe or anything like that. It's more like to the people who are at the very top, there's a different level of luxury to aspire to.

You know what I mean? And these luxury brands like Hermès, Chanel, are luxury for all the rest of us. We consider them luxury. And then on top of that, the super yacht people are aiming for a totally different tier of luxury. And maybe we'll just see that keep creeping up and up maybe soon. There will be, I mean, there are already replicas of the Row and Loro Piana and stuff like that coming up. So maybe we'll just continue to see duplications of everything up and down the status chain. But I think what is never going to go away is the desire for status in the first place. It's sort of universally human to, I guess, be yearning for some sort of social recognition or a claim or to be trying to show other people that you are part of the elite circle and that you belong somewhere or everywhere that you're not supposed to be.

I think that also bags are unique in the way that they are these beautiful little bonbons or art items or accessories that you can tote around that have nothing to do with how the rest of you looks. If you look really sloppy and you're having the worst day ever, but you're carrying around this jewel of a bag, it's an effortless way of showing the world something or trying to say something about yourself that is not dependent on you as a personality or any other details about you. So I think in the pandemic, this especially appealed to people when everyone was sort of miserable and locked inside, and maybe some people were looking worse than they would have otherwise, and bags were just this utopian ideal that could just be shipped to them and then toted out into the world to show something about themselves that's unchanging and paradoxically kind of intrinsic to them, or trying to show something intrinsic even if they had the worst day ever, and were looking their worst. So I think that'll continue to be a huge part of our culture actually, like the luxury bag as a status symbol. And maybe it just depends on what kind of luxury bag we're going to be looking at.

Katie:

Yeah, it's interesting too, the mirror world of the personal finance community in all of this, because in the online circles that I traffic, the status symbols are almost the reverse. There's a certain status afforded to people who almost go out of their way to prove how little they need or how frugal they are. Or I'm the millionaire who drives the beat up Toyota Camry, which is a different framing of stealth wealth than I think what it has come to mean on fashion TikTok where it's, oh, I'm duping Kendall Roy's $600 black hat. It is more like, oh, I'm almost cosplaying someone that is much less wealthy than I actually am. And it's so look how virtuous or self, self-effacing I am that I capable of accumulating so much wealth and not giving into these status games that all you other people are playing. So it's really interesting to me through that lens.

And I don't know, I think for me at the end of all of this, there is this question that kind of remains about someone who would still pay for a real designer bag who would still plunk down thousands of dollars for the real thing. And I'm curious, in your reporting and the women that you talked to or that you heard about who owned both the reals and the fakes, how do they now feel about the distinction between them? Does the real thing lose its luster, or do they still feel as though the real thing has something that the fake one does not?

Amy X. Wang:

A hugely divisive question amongst bag enthusiasts. If you look even on their purse forums, one of them is called Purse Forum, but there are others online of people who are just devoted to fashion from that side of things, from the side of wanting beautiful designs and enjoying fashion, there's a huge split of people, half of whom say a design is the same design, whether it's an Hermès factory that makes it or a factory at Guangzhou, China that makes it without the official designation of the brand. And then there's a contingent of people who say, actually there's this hugely ineffable thing of a real bag that you just don't get. It might be the suppleness of the leather. It might be the care that a handwoven artisan has given to it with decades of training that the person in the Chinese factory does not have. Or it might be just the fact that you've spent a certain amount of money on it and made a financial commitment to it that infuses it with a sort of meaning.

But that is to say that visually when you look at these two bags, the fake and the real, there's nothing to distinguish them. So we're essentially just arguing over the meaning or the philosophy behind the two things. I know exactly what you mean about when you say that there are other people who sort of talk or flaunt wealth and personal finance in other ways. For a lot of people, it's the fact that you spent $40,000 on an engagement ring that matters, right? Not how the engagement ring looks or something like that. There are some people who just believe that spending the money on the thing is what makes it valuable, not the thing itself. And so it's interesting that there are so many different approaches towards, I guess simply consuming an item and being the owner of an item that you can really take. While some people believe that it's the intent or the meaning or the sort of broader existential purpose behind the thing that matters, others are just like, no, it's just the thing. If you could get it for cheaper, you should get it for cheaper.

Katie:

Yeah, that's fascinating. When you were describing kind of the difference between the Hermès artisan and someone in a factory in China making the same thing with the same materials and kind of this ineffable quality that we to the former that we don't, to the latter, it struck me that we, in America, I would say, me included, tend to almost fetishize or have this feeling about Europe and think European goods, Italian, French, we romanticize it so much. And I wonder, do you know anything about the actual luxury market and how much of the French and Italian luxury brands are American women and men consuming them as opposed to people that actually live Italians and French people?

Amy X. Wang:

That's a good question. I don't have the stats on hand, but I do recall that you're right, that we sort of fetishized the European ness of the brand names. But I do recall that a lot of the brands actually do just make a lot of their products in China. They source the materials from like leather markets in a particular region of Italy, but then they'll often just ship it—

Katie:

Send them to China to make it.

Amy X. Wang:

Have the labor be done elsewhere and then ship it back. So it's still, I mean, it's accurate that the bag size made in Naples or made in Paris because it is designed and part of it is made there, but it's not fully done there. You know what I mean?

So it's like the attitude towards bags is very different country by country. In Chinese countries, there's a lot more pragmatic materialism; the bag where you're using it as a status symbol. In France actually, where a lot of the bags have their designer houses originating the designs, like Hermès, obviously the Louis Vuitton empire and the LVMH labels, there is actually a much more draconian like legal punishment to owning a fake bag. They take that really, really seriously. If you actually carry a fake bag around in France, it's technically punishable by jail time. They take it as a sort of art rather than just consumption because those signs are French-born. They're sort of part of the culture. Whereas I feel like in New York or other American cities, I feel like other people around me are just kind of like, this is a pretty thing that I bought with money, and it doesn't really take on that huge, vast connotation.

Katie:

Talk about layers, man. I mean, jeez. I mean it surprises me that you can get jail time for having a replica in a country. But in some ways, I love that description of pragmatic materialism. What does this give me in the world? What status does this bestow upon me to announce that I'm in the know or I have the money or purportedly have the money to afford such a quality and high status good? And in all the brands we've talked about today, I think the Row is the only luxury brand that categorizes itself as American, though I believe some of their clothes are made in Italy now, but there's no equivalent in America of say, a brand like Chanel, that I can think of.

Amy X. Wang:

Right, right. Have you ever tried on the Row’s clothes?

Katie:

I have not.

Amy X. Wang:

Okay. So I have in the boutique on the Upper East side, and it was a crazy experience because I walked in there thinking I'd be arrested or something for posing as someone who could afford the row. Like, oh my God, everybody here is a billionaire.

Katie:

They want to see a brokerage account before you walk in.

Amy X. Wang:

They're going to be able to tell that I'm just faking it. Oh my God. It was very normal. It was just a shop that happened to be very nice. But the experience of trying on clothes in the road was very, very interesting because they looked really ordinary on the shelf or on the hanger, and then you try on this $5,000 pair of jeans or whatever it is, and you're like, wow, there is something to the idea that this item makes me feel richer, far richer than I actually am. And it's like, it's something about the thoughtfulness of details or the particular way that it's sumptuous and soft and well constructed, whatever. And then of course, the aura you get of being in the store where salespeople are bringing you sparkling waters for free and hovering outside in very quiet voices where that taught me something I guess slightly different about the luxury market, which is it's really about how it makes you feel in terms of your position in the world carrying a fake bag or wearing the Row actually, whether it's real or fake, I guess carrying something luxurious makes you treat it a different way, and that I think appeals to a lot of people.

Katie:

Incredible. I think you're saying it correctly, and I don't know how to say it, Loro Piana, is that right?

Amy X. Wang:

I think it is something like that.

Katie:

I dunno, I'm going to be so honest. I don't know how to say it, but I went into one of their stores when I was in Vail, Colorado once and was struck by that same ethereal quality. You walk in and there's something about the lighting and how open it is, and any given rack has four things on it, and every piece of clothing has so much space around it, and you know that all of these aesthetic choices are intentional, but the sales person or people that are helping you, we walked in and I'm like, they're going to take one look at us. I'm wearing cowboy boots. They are going to know that I have no business touching their $3,000 turtleneck. But you almost feel like you have to talk in hushed tones in those stores like you're—

Amy X. Wang:

In a museum. Yeah.

Katie:

Yes. It feels like a museum, and I totally hear you about, there is something about the aura or the feeling that when you're in those spaces that I can understand in some ways why people who can afford that experience are willing to pay a premium for it because it is affirming in a certain way. I can imagine how it would feel to have the money to spend on something like that and to be treated in that way and to kind of know that you're in on this little secret that the average person looking, it's not a Gucci sweatsuit, it's not like you're covered in the logo, but someone else that's in your same, it's like a little wink at the other rich people around you, which I think is a fascinating business model, we'll say, and I think tells us quite a bit about human psychology.

Amy X. Wang:

Yeah, exactly. And that exactly is the answer to your question. You asked earlier about why people would go and buy the real Chanel if they know that they can get the fictional, and I think the answer is that you're getting two different things from both experiences. One is the wink of the real Loro Piana store where you're like, aha, I'm going in and getting my cashmere turtleneck. I'm so exclusive and I'm looking around sort of smirking and being seen doing this. And the other is the more subversive winking of the I'm cheating the system. You all don't know unless you're my close friends. I haven't told you this bag is a fake, and I'm going to a Michelin star restaurant pretending I'm far wealthier than I am. And those are different ways of facing the world that are so different that I can imagine if I were someone in a position to have both, I would want both of them equally, and I can understand why you would be chasing both sides of that coin.

Katie:

Thank you so much for joining us today. This was such a treat.

Amy X. Wang:

Thank you, Katie. This was great.

Katie:

Like I told Amy, I thought about all the times I've spoken with diehard personal finance people, a group amongst which I definitely used to count myself, who claim they are above logos, brand names, designer goods, and like I said, me too. I definitely used to feel that way and say those things almost as though it's a sign of intelligence or discipline or virtue to not care to be above it all.

And I say that without placing a value judgment on it, it is merely an observation that I've made from partaking in and watching these types of conversations play out in personal finance communities over the years. It's conspicuous non-consumption as a marker of wealth or a badge of prestige. It's not just not partaking in the consumption. It's going out of your way to emphasize and perform your non-participation by calling attention to it. I mean, it's practically a running joke on twit that personal finance personalities love to brag about the fact that there are millionaires who drive Corollas.

Six days ago, CNBC released an article claiming that quiet luxury is still alive and well in 2024, seeing as this was really a big trend in 2023. But [it’s] under a new name now, old money, and for some reason that connected a dot for me that I hadn't yet when we set out to produce this episode. It's not just aspiring to an aesthetic that suggests wealth in general. It's something that suggests comfort and ease in your wealth. Someone who's recently come into money probably had to work pretty hard for it. New money types are grinders, but old money… the aesthetic choices we associate with understated fashion. And if you know brands has a totally different connotation, this is a person who's probably really never known economic precarity and maybe never really known real hard work either. If your family has been very rich for generations, it stands to reason that you've practically inherited feelings of effortlessness and nonchalance.

It's in your DNA. In some ways, it's like being a royal, that being rich is just your birthright. And in a time when things feel so economically perilous, and as CNBC also reported, half of young adults experience something called money dysmorphia, wherein they have disproportionately negative views of their own financial situation due to exposure to others' lives on social media. What could be more alluring and comforting than a lifestyle or symbol of money to ease? Like I told you at the outset of this episode, it really felt cognitively dissonant to me at first.

But the more that I chew on it, the more it makes sense that it's something we feel a visceral desire to emulate. If throwing on a plain sweater and logoed loafers could soften the sense of instability, I mean, who amongst us wouldn't slip into something a little more understated?

That is all for this week. I will see you next week, same time, same place on The Money with Katie Show. Our show is a production of Morning Brew and is produced by Henah Velez and me, Katie Gatti Tassin, with our audio engineering and sound design from Nick Torres. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and additional fact checking comes from Kate Brandt.