Beguiled By Brands

Travelers to the US, beware the “Emperor’s Clothes” syndrome. Like the mighty king in the fable, you may have to be clothes-less in reality, though you imagine you are dressed in the most exclusive ones. As part of their surveillance of smuggled counterfeit goods, US Customs are seizing fake luxury items. So, your bagful of Versace dresses or Armani shirts and suits – possibly what you are wearing too – could be seized, scissored, and junked, leaving you in “natural condition”. One counterfeit item will be permitted, so you can choose between your expensive-looking Jimmy Choo shoes (bought for Rs 800 instead of 50,000) or your Nike shoes, for which you forked out Rs 500 (not 10,000 plus). Fortunately, your fake Tag Heur watch, bought at a roadside stall in Bangkok years ago, might be ignored; though, in keeping with its globo-cop role, the “seize and destroy” operation may not be limited to counterfeits of US brands.

To track the source, our natural ally and strategic partner may demand – as part of the Indo-US Industrial Security Agreement, or one of numerous others – intrusive inspections of our markets. Imagine a US team swooping down on roadside shops in Sarojini Nagar or Janpath in Delhi, or Linking Road in Mumbai. They would have a field day cutting up fake-labelled dresses and clothes. The massive scale could well spur another Indo-US strategic agreement: the number of US H-1B visas given to Indians will be matched with those required for the hordes of US Customs officials needed for the find-and-destroy-fakes task in India!

What is it that leads people to buy faux luxury? The functionality, even the appearance, of a Rs 2,000 Birkin bag is as good as the 100,000-plus dollars original. Fake Armani clothes look as good as the original and may well last longer. A Rolex made in China may serve your time-keeping purpose as adequately as the original Swiss chronometer. Clearly, what people are hankering after is the brand. While attributes like quality, reliability, workmanship, and design may be key attributes of the original, what is most important is the price. For, it is this that guarantees exclusiveness, marking the owner as a person of taste, aesthetic sense and, crucially, prosperous. Hermes carries exclusiveness beyond this: you can’t buy a Birkin handbag unless you first buy a few other products of theirs. So much easier to be in the Birkin-owner class by just buying a cheap fake!

What explains this desire to own special brands (even if fake)? Is it the brand-aura created by successful marketeers, or Brahminism of people who aspire to be at the top rung of a hierarchical society? Some may buy a brand because of its life-style association: the Levi’s outdoorsman, the Nike sportsperson. Others to be “in”: Apple i-phones. But where does this leave the super-rich? How do they establish their distinctiveness, vis-à-vis the fake-owners, beyond a yacht party in foreign seas?

Credit to the scissors-wielding US Customs, though, for triggering another innovative job-opportunity in India: that of creating fake bills on fake Hermes, Gucci, or Armani stationery to establish the authenticity of fake goods!