Answering THE question EVERY single newbie asks at some point
Hi there 👋
Since we get this question on every second post, I thought I’d make a post answering the ever present query “Is my bag calloutable?”
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this - Yes, and it’s because you’re asking that question.
Bear with me, this might not be the nicest post, but I promise it’ll help if you take it for what it is, which is tough love.
I work in high fashion. I’m on the business side (internal management consulting), but I come into contact with the merchandising, manufacturing and marketing teams often in our projects. I’m no Zeko, I also don’t have deep brand specific knowledge the way some users do, but I can usually tell if something is a rep or not better than the average untrained person based on quality of materials, stitching and other indicators you learn to notice in this line of work.
Even then? My hit rate is very much hit or miss.
But it doesn’t matter.
Why?
- No one is looking at your bag. I live in a country and city at the moment for work where people are OBSESSED with branded goods and luxury. Everyone from the barista to the billionaires are decked out in designer, real or fake.
No one cares. No one is looking. Everyone is busy living their own life.
Literally no one who’s employed and/or has hobbies is wasting their time staring at your bag counting stitches to catch you carrying a fake.
- When I’ve clocked reps, they’ve been truly terrible, obvious fakes far worse than anything you can get even from a low tier factory.
When a bag is in movement on someone’s body, it appears very differently than in a photo where you’re explicitly looking to assess quality.
The only times I’ve found bags instantly clockable were when they were blatantly terrible or impossible fantasy pieces
e.g Chanel classic flap with the GG logo instead of Chanel’s
And by terrible I mean terrible. The mess which you wouldn’t even find in lower tier factory albums.
My theory is that those bags are from other countries that haven’t quite caught up to Chinese rep manufacturing
So please, chill out. Your lower tier factory bag is still not clockable from standing and viewing distance.
- If someone clocks you using context cues, they’re not someone you should care about anyway.
I try very hard not to use context clues to judge anyone. You never know someone’s situation. Maybe a bag was a gift, maybe they saved up a long time for it.
Again, I live in a city where people genuinely would rather save for a Chanel and take the train than save for a car. So I try not to judge based on someone’s apparent economic situation, clothes, or other factors.
There WILL be others that do so, there will be people who judge your bag as fake if you don’t meet their standards for grooming or what they think someone who owns that bag SHOULD look like.
Is that correct? No.
But let me tell you this, they would judge you carrying an authentic bag as a fake too.
If you don’t pass a judgy person’s internal litmus test for what someone who owns a Chanel looks like, you could have paid 100k at Chanel in the last month for a head to toe outfit and they’d still think it was all fake.
So guess what? It doesn’t matter. Let that information free you. Don’t strive for the validation of someone whose opinion shouldn’t matter.
- And here’s the controversial one. You’re giving your bag away with the insecurity.
Like I said above, designer items are so common where I live that I tune 90% of them out entirely from my field of view.
You wanna know when it’s noticeable?
When the person wearing it is obviously insecure about it. When they’re hunched over, having the bag faced inward to hide the logo, have their hands positioned strategically to make the bag less noticeable, therefore inadvertently calling more attention to it (obviously doesn’t apply in places like Paris where you need to hide your bag for safety).
The more insecure you are about the bag, the more obvious it becomes in your behaviour, thereby calling attention to it. Even when you don’t think you’re being self conscious about it, it’s all about the mentality. It’ll show.
So stop asking “will people call me out” and “is my bag clockable”. When you assess your PSPs, you should have already decided if the factory photos are close enough for you. At that point, assess your PSPs for quality and match to the factory photos.
Once you unbox the bag, zip up those insecurities and throw them away. Seriously, never think about it again. Wear your bag with confidence and your head held high. And that way YOU make the bag uncalloutable.
- Ok. Maybe this one might be even more controversial than the last.
Grow some thicker skin.
These are FAKE bags. They will never be real bags.
Ask yourself why you care so much about passing them off as the real thing.
We all say we buy the bags for the design, not to status signal and not for the branding, but who are we kidding? That’s definitely a part of it, or you’d just buy an unbranded dupe, which can be found for literally any bag.
If you were truly just buying the bag for the design, why do you need people to think it’s real?
And if you’re buying the bag to status signal, it’s a futile effort because if you had that status, everyone would assume it was real anyway (see Becca Bloom and her Birkin fakes).
And if you need people to think it’s real cause you think it’s morally abhorrent to buy reps, why are you being a hypocrite lol
We buy the bags because it gives us joy to be able to wear a “luxury” item reserved for the rich and have that be accessible to us. Someone calling us out is scary because it affects that fantasy. But ultimately, it’s not a luxury item, it’s still just a fake from a workshop. And you shouldn’t let anyone calling you out take away your enjoyment of it.
Also, please be realistic. What exactly is gonna happen? Your dentist’s receptionist is gonna stand up and point and screech “a FAKE! She wears a FAKE! FROM CHINA!”, and then everyone in the waiting room will all laugh in unison at you?
Like, be so for real. Even if that happens, you get up, walk out, and find yourself a new dentist and leave them a review on their unprofessionalism.
If your friend makes you feel bad for it, you talk to your friend about how they’re hurting your feelings, and if they don’t stop, they’re not a friend, honey.
TLDR: sorry for the clickbait post introduction, the real answer is that no, your bag isn’t callout-able. Unless, you let your insecurity with it show or you run into judgy people. In the former, you learn to be confident, and the latter, it doesn’t even matter anyway.
Wear your reps happily. Life is too short to be wasting worrying about this, we might all die any day from the orange doofus starting ww3 anyway.
Editing to add:
The one situation where reps ARE easily clockable are when it’s a rep of an ultra rare bag and it doesn’t fit your lifestyle.
E.g Buying a Lizard skin CF, or the new Chanel 25 pony hair bag. An extremely limited number were produced, and VVIPs were heavily prioritised for it. It’s not a bag where the “I got it from a friend” story would work.
And no, “resale” won’t work either because there are very few up for resale, and they’re selling for 2.5x retail. Unless you’re someone who’s known to shop frequently at the boutique, it’ll be an obvious rep to anyone who knows anything Chanel.
I’m getting the rep knowing that it’ll be an obvious rep even if it’s a perfect “mirror” (hate that term) copy. I’m ok with that.
So many people are rushing to buy it without consideration of that. It’s not a bag to buy if you care about passing and you don’t have extensive Chanel boutique history.