TikTok, Tariffs and Luxury's Fake News Problem

0:07Hello and welcome to The Debrief from The Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BOLF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. And I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young. This week, we're talking about a strange new genre of TikTok videos that claim to be pulling back the curtain on the luxury industry's best kept secret. These videos are claiming that many of the super fake bags on the market come from the same factories as the real ones. It's a great sales pitch, but is it true? And what does the popularity of these videos, true or not, say about consumer trust in luxury brands and the mythologies around them, especially as those mythologies and the prices that they charge have grown so much in recent years?

0:53Here to help us make sense of it all is BOF's chief sustainability correspondent, Sarah Kent. Hi, Sarah. Welcome back to The Debrief. Thanks for having me, Sheena. And I think for this story, my title has actually changed.

1:08I'm update that for the next one. Yeah, please. So Sarah, talk to us about what these TikTok videos that have gone viral to the nth degree, what are they claiming? So it's a combination. It's actually really interesting because Brian, you mentioned that, you know, the videos are claiming to produce super fakes in the same bags as luxury products are made. Only a handful of them are actually making that claim. A lot of them are just sort of saying we can make these products that are as good as what the luxury brands make. But the way this trend has traveled and gone viral is other influencers and content creators have picked up on this narrative of these bags being made in China and created their own videos, repeating this over and over until what people who view the videos take away is, oh, luxury products are being made in China.

2:00You mean people online don't understand fact from fiction in a TikTok video? Wait, what? It gets confusing, you know? It does. And that's the headline of your story, right? Luxury's fake news problem. Right. And, you know, part of the reason that people don't understand fact from fiction isn't just because people take things on face value online when perhaps they should be a little bit more critical, but also because luxury provides very little transparency over where its goods are produced. And so it's very easy for false narratives to take hold because there's not a lot of information out there to contradict it.

2:35And that's intentional, right? I mean, we mentioned mythology before, but I mean, that's part of the brand that you don't really know. I mean, you're meant to assume, I guess, there's some atelier in Italy that's hand stitching all 10 million Louis Vuitton bags being sold out there. But that's never been true, right? Right, that is 100 % the mythology of the brands. And depending on the brand, that is more or less true. Like Hermes is quite a vertically integrated company. It does own a lot of factories and a lot of its product are made in its own factories. Most of the other brands are not. Louis Vuitton is relatively vertically integrated, but a lot of the other LVMH brands are not.

3:16So for instance, Dior, the majority of its products are not made in factories that LVMH owns. And the minute that happens, then there's more of a question mark over where those things are being made. And unlike a lot of fast fashion companies, which now do publish lists of their suppliers, most luxury brands do not. So we've called this a strange new genre, but these videos didn't exactly come out of nowhere. Can you help us draw the connection between what we were seeing on TikTok and the trade war that's happening? Yeah, it was sort of this weird reaction to the tariff. You know, one thing that's interesting is this genre of video had existed before April.

3:55Particularly, you had content creators going to factories and saying, hey, you know those Lululemon leggings you love? This is where they're made. But once the tariffs were introduced, I think this is kind of the algorithm. Topics like made in China got pushed up the agenda. People started watching them. And suddenly, because more attention was being drawn to these videos, more people started making them. And they started talking about, hey, not just these products are made in China, but you know what would be a great way to avoid tariffs. These products that are really expensive already, why don't you just buy direct from us Chinese manufacturers at a much lower price?

4:33So like that$10 ,000 Chanel handbag, we can sell it to you for a few hundred bucks. And it's more or less the same thing as the sales pitch. And have we established whether you can actually do that? I mean, I'm assuming probably not a real Chanel bag. But what about the lifelike fake? There are many unboxing videos on TikTok now of people squealing in happiness over how good the fake they have bought is. So people seem very happy with their purchases, but I don't know if that is, I cannot recommend that this is what people go and do. These are not real products. You know, you don't know what quality you're going to get.

5:11You're taking a risk by following this procedure. Can you talk a little bit about the claims that these manufacturers are making about their connection to the actual luxury brands? Are they claiming to have a relationship with Louis Vuitton or Hermes, which you've already established is probably the least likely to have any connection here? Are they claiming that? Some of them are, but not that many. Only a handful of videos have actually been made directly claiming to have that relationship. And those got taken down very quickly. But they've been reposted, reshared. They've traveled very fast.

5:44And that message has filtered through. And the story we wrote talked about luxury's fake news problem. And this is really the fake news element of it. it is supremely unlikely that any factory that had a real relationship with any luxury brand would go on TikTok to market super fakes. Like that is a very lucrative relationship that will not exist anymore if you make a decision to do that. So if you do see someone on TikTok claiming to manufacture for Hermes or Louis Vuitton or Chanel, it is very, very unlikely that they actually do so. Duly noted. what I find so interesting here though is not so much the existence of these videos or even the claims they're making but how true it feels to so many people I was telling YouTube before the show that even though I know in my head this is all fake essentially there's still some lizard part of my brain that still thinks it's true and I cannot get rid of it and I am sure that's true of many.

6:45It's the, I can't name a brain part. Okay. I'm asking because we've made this joke in editorial meetings too. I said, I literally created like boilerplate text to send all my friends that know what we all do and like reached out to me and said, well, should I invest in the Chanel bag anymore? Because I just saw this thing on TikTok. And I was like, well, you really thought that every single little component of anything is made in just one place. And that might be true for like a small fraction, if that, of some of the merchandise. But even if it's the zipper, and Sarah, you could probably talk a little bit about this.

7:23I mean, that's probably in the weeds, but I thought people knew that. Yeah, I mean, this is part of what's interesting, right? Because like Brian, you said it's this weird lizard part of your brain. But it is also the fact that, you know, we're operating on these hugely globalized supply chains. And even if a product is made in Italy or made in France, a lot of the components that go into that product are likely made elsewhere in the world. Like the most high quality zippers people often talk about are YKK. It's a Japanese company. Those aren't manufactured in France or Italy. There's lots of different bits of componentry that go into handbags.

7:57There's also a question of like where the best forms of manufacturing now take place. For instance, if you were making performance footwear or shoes or sneakers in particular, China, Cambodia and Vietnam are probably the best factories you can find in the world to do that. And so if you want to make a luxury product of that quality, you probably don't want to make that in France or Italy. It kind of depends what you're making. And then here's the serious answer to about my lizard brain, which is that I, to Sarah's point, I think deep down most, or even on the surface, most people do not care where their products are made.

8:34I don't actually care. Made in Italy, made in China. Like that is really a stand in for, do I believe this is a quality product or not a quality product? And the fact that so many people gleefully shared these videos, even though they claim to be fans of these brands says that they don't really think these products are worth the money. And the other thing about this is it's a delicious narrative, isn't it? It's like there's this story that's been building around luxury, you know, since the pandemic, really, since brands really started hiking their prices where consumers were like, oh, is this worth it?

9:05is, oh, maybe the quality is going down. We don't trust it. And this is just like a delicious little piece of intrigue that plays into this narrative people already have in their heads. You know, they're loving to bash on these brands. And, you know, this is just such an entertaining way to do that. And speaking of loving to bash on these brands, they're not really saying much, right? They're sort of reacting the way you expect a very coveted, private, protected luxury brand to respond, which is to say nothing. What do you make of that as a response? I think it's a really interesting moment for luxury because like historically they've kind of treated the media a bit like the royal family does where the policy is never complain, never explain.

9:48Well, actually, luxury brands complain a lot, but they don't like to explain. And, you know, historically, in an old fashioned media landscape where brands had a huge amount of control over where things got placed and how information was dispersed, that could work. Because if you didn't talk about something, people lost interest and they moved on. In a social media age, I don't know if that will work so well. In fairness, this trend seems to have peaked in April over the last week or so. There have been fewer posts around this. So maybe it was the right decision to just kind of say nothing and hope it goes away.

10:25But I think the underlying conversation around between consumers questioning the value of luxury isn't going to go away. And if brands aren't giving compelling information that explains, hey, you know what, like this is where our stuff is made and this is why it's valued in this manner, those questions aren't going to fade. And I think one of the awkward things for a lot of the luxury brands is they don't have a simple story to tell here. You know, they can't say, actually, these are the 15 pristine ateliers we use to make everything. Their supply chains are much more complex and they don't really want to have to delve into that with their customer base.

11:05I love the example of that Chanel video that got posted and taken down. It's such a perfect illustration of that. I mean, this is such an interesting video example. So there was a story that came out at the beginning of April before any of these TikTok videos had taken off, before Liberation Day, before, you know, when we all thought we were going to live in a pre-trade war world. And the story was about how Chanel manufactures. And it was part of the company's strategy to explain, you know, our bags have got more expensive, but this is why they're so valuable. And the video showed a factory in France where a lot of the stitching was mechanized.

11:43It was machine stitching. And this is actually just how Chanel bags are made. If you're doing those kind of puffy fronts and you try and hand stitch that, it gets very, that is not the most efficient way to do it. You need to use machines. But people saw this and they were like, my Chanel bag is not handcrafted, you know? And they reacted very badly. And the video got taken down and got replaced with photos of individuals sewing the bags. But the damage had kind of been done because all of the comments underneath it were then like, oh, hey, you know, we saw the original video. We know what's going on here.

12:17So I think that's part of it, too, is if you're going to talk about this, you really do have to explain and go deep. And that's very difficult to do when you're a brand built on mythology and just, you know, this amazing image that you want people to understand very quickly. It's, you know, the equivalent of soundbite culture, but through an image. we'll be back with more of the debrief right after this

12:48we talked about them not responding you know in the medium where the backlash is taking place so chanel is not going on social media and uh speaking back to tiktok creators about the truth but what about legally is there anything that a luxury brand could do legally in the face of this kind of content surfacing around? I mean, certainly behind the scenes, they can be engaging with TikTok and asking them to take down videos. And some of the videos have been taken down. Things we all know on social media that the efficacy of that kind of thing can be limited because you take down the original, but 100 people have already taken it and shared it and you've lost control.

13:26The trade associations associated with the luxury industry in France have also been quietly lobbying policymakers, making this really about a counterfeiting issue, which it is. This has, you know, super fakes have been a growing issue for some time. This has taken this to an even more mainstream level and made it even more, you know, you don't even need to do some basic Googling to find a supplier for your super fake now. It's all over TikTok. And so they've made this a counterfeiting issue. And they're saying, hey, we need to crack down on this legally because this is an IP problem. And I think that's a smart strategy, but it's interesting that they've been quite quiet about it because, again, no one really wants to draw attention to this issue.

14:06Yeah, I mean, what they really need to do is address that underlying quality issue. If that perception doesn't change, there's no amount of legal smackdowns or takedown of TikTok videos that's going to solve that problem for them. I mean, what are they doing to address this quality question? Well, I think that is a more difficult question than it was three months ago. up until very recently. The elevation strategy for a lot of brands was, okay, we've raised prices, but we want to simplify our product regime and focus on making the products that we're making even better. Now I think the entire fashion industry is just in panic mode, thinking what the hell do we do about the current tariff regime?

14:45And we need to figure that out before we do anything else. So I think everyone's priorities are a bit different than they were. Plus they don't want to have to be in the position of essentially competing with their own dupes and trying to say, well, look, our bag is better than this bag. You don't want to acknowledge that other bag's existence, probably. I think that's totally right. And the truth is Gen Z, the next generation that's going to have the spending power, doesn't really care, it seems. I mean, they're the drivers of dupe culture. So I think luxury brands, we talk about lessons that they can learn or what they're going to do about this.

15:18I don't know that they can rest on their laurels for very much longer. Well, I mean, it goes to this kind of heart of the question around what drives the value of a brand, because it's clearly not just the IP if someone else can copy it. So what makes people want to buy the real thing versus a fake? And at the moment, it seems like the brands are losing that battle. I think we may be overselling this, though. And I know I'm the one who keeps pushing it, but I think I'm overselling it because, like, look at two of the most successful companies amid this luxury downturn. It's Hermes, which, as we established, owns its own production, really does rest its reputation on quality and makes that central to all of its branding.

15:57And then another one that's performed better than I think people expected is Richemont, which makes a lot of jewelry and watches, which really aren't subject to these kind of videos as much because it's a lot harder to fake a Swiss watch than a handbag. That is very true. Although I did have an interesting conversation about Hermes, which was less about not trusting the quality and more about how do you react if you walk down the street and, you know, all of the girlies have very convincing fakes on their arms and you've bought the real thing. Like, is that as desirable as it was before? Well, now you just look like the person that's willing to spend 10x on something that there is such a slight difference.

16:38Or worse, they think you're carrying a fake and you did spend 10x. Well, you've got to prove you spent 10x and then there's no value in that now. You just look like you're willing to overspend. And especially, I think, Gen Z and younger millennials' minds that did not come of age with the same sort of value system around luxury. But here's what I think is interesting about that as well, just to play, I guess, to bring in the other point of view on this is you've also got the emergence of a boom boom culture now. And so we've been talking about this coming out of this age of quiet luxury where everyone's kind of pared back.

17:15But if we switch to a moment of excess again, you could go back to a point where everyone wants to be wearing that logo bag and have the thing on their arm. It's all cyclical. Yeah, it totally is. I mean, I was just looking at this quote from LVMH's US CEO from earlier this week where he said quiet luxury was getting pretty annoying. I can tell they're quite eager to move on from this moment when you can have these lookalike, like kind of slimmed down bags and just like go crazy again. So I'll take it back to the beginning for a second. We started off with these TikTok videos and maybe they've peaked in April.

17:51Maybe they'll come back around again. Sarah, what should be my updated boilerplate text for people that are asking us about the reality of these videos and should they invest in luxury or not or what these really mean? What are the big things that we should know and what is the truth here? OK, I would say, number one, if a factory or a content creator is claiming to have a relationship with a luxury brand on TikTok. They almost certainly are not. Those bags are not real. Number two, a lot goes into creating these bags. Obviously, buying a knockoff is very tempting, but there's a reason we have IP protections.

18:29It is so that those creatives who are trying to do something new and exciting are protected. The luxury brands can, they've got a lot going for them, but particularly for smaller independent brands, if you're choosing to buy a knockoff or fake of what they've done versus investing in the brand themselves, that really hurts small creatives. You know, it's kind of similar to what we saw in the music industry when everyone was like streaming for free. You're really screwing over the creators. So everyone has their own moral code. You decide how to spend your money, but just bear that in mind. And then I think the third thing is the made in label just doesn't, it's not a shorthand for quality anymore.

19:13Like there are factories that are incredible all around the world. So don't be snobby about where something is made. Sarah, this was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you guys for having me. Always a pleasure. Please be sure to check out Sarah's article, Luxury Has a Fake News Problem, is silence the right strategy at businessoffashion.com. This and other stories are available to BOF professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies and Eric Rhea. I'm Sheena Butler-Young. And I'm Brian Baskin.

19:46We'll be back next week with a new episode. Thanks so much for joining us, and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.