Britain’s Boom In Cheap Prada And Designer Goods

THERE’S something rather shallow about wearing clothes or accessories which have the designer’s name emblazoned all over them.

Rather like driving a flash sportscar, it smacks of no class and a lot of insecurity. Anyway, according to a new survey, a lot of those designer goods are about as genuine as a BBC phone-in quiz show.

The survey was commissioned by intellectual property law firm Davenport Lyons, who found that up to two-thirds of the great British public are proud to buy fake goods, a rise of 20 per cent on last year. (I wonder if intellectual property lawyers have enjoyed a boom?)

Overall, the fake market is now worth a whopping £14billion a year, a 10 per cent rise on 2006 while across the globe, the figure could be as high as £200billion.

Simon Tracey, of Davenport Lyons, says: “The social acceptability is a deeply concerning shift in consumer behaviour. Given the balance of findings in our 2007 report, the time has come to tackle the UK demand for fakes head-on.”

The most popular items were clothes, followed by shoes, watches, leather goods and jewellery and, interestingly, it’s not only the cash-strapped who are choosing cheap knock-offs with one in five of purchases being made by households earning more than £50,000.

According to the report, almost on third of the UK population has unknowingly bought a fake item.

The Mail helpfully gives us a few hints on how to spot a fake. Apparently, fake Prada perfume can cause blindness (so don’t drink it) and in reference to dodgy Burberry pashminas, the newspaper tells us: “Fakes may look the same as originals but won’t feel the same because of inferior material.”

But who knows what a real one feels like?

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, July 2007 | In: Money Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink