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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/magazine/celine-chanel-gu... (Inside the Delirious Rise of ‘Superfake’ Handbags)

> This led me to a Reddit community of replica enthusiasts, who traded details about “trusted sellers” capable of delivering a Chanel 2.55 or Loewe Puzzle or Hermès Birkin that promised to be indistinguishable from the original, and priced at a mere 5 percent or so of the M.S.R.P.

> ...

> What was once a sly novelty has bloomed into a gigantic market. In 2016, a Virginia woman was sentenced for buying $400,000 worth of designer purses from department stores, returning high-quality knockoffs and reselling the real bags for profit; the stores went years without catching on.

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There are amazing counterfeit watched to be had. For better or worse, suits don't work like this. Instead, you find a Tailor in Vietnam or Colombia, who will make you something great for $2-300. But the best materials/fabrics aren't accessible without paying thousands. That said, these days, I rarely have the opportunity to wear suits.

Do you have to travel to those countries to get fitted or you just send them the measurements and have it shipped to you?

My tailor from Thailand flew in to Brussels and I met him at an hotel where he took my measurements.

A few weeks later, the suits were shipped directly to my home.

He also had several customers in Germany and did the same for them.

If you live near Seattle, you can have a company called Ruby Threads manage the process - they make twice-yearly trips to Vietnam, returning with made-to-measure custom suits:

https://www.rubysuits.com/

I am not the above poster, but I have a semi-reliable tailor in Southeast Asia. They took my measurements a few years ago when I visited their country, and I send them size updates when needed. They have excellent fabrics in a variety of colors and weights.

I have seen that there are pros and cons (with this particular tailor, others shops can be more professional, but they are also more expensive, sometimes much more).

Pros: hard-to-beat price ($35 for a classic or sporty cotton shirt, $60 for wool/cashmere/denim/cotton pants, $150 for a wool or cotton sport coat, $200-250 for a suit) for something that is somewhere between bespoke and made-to-measure, opportunity for low-cost explorations (let's say I have a few unique garments), playing with details and fabrics.

Cons: communication is often challenging (most speak broken English, which demands a good deal of patience and intuition), they are not very detail-oriented (some of the uniqueness of the garments were not sought by me, e.g., e.g., bizarre button placement or pocket shape, etc.), quality of garments can vary unpredictably, and they are always asking for more business, which can be tiring.

The other option is to buy on eBay, as I have been doing for some time. Although most pieces are priced correctly, some are much cheaper than they should be. I have bought fantastic, semi-current suits (say, suits that are 10 years old, but with classic features, meaning they are relatively "timeless") that have been used sporadically (the color of the ink on the label is a tell, some have been used once or twice) for $150 when new they would have cost 10 or 15 times that.

But I get much more satisfaction when I order clothes from my tailor. Those are pieces "designed by me", for me.

I did something like this for a while. I was in Hong Kong in the late 80s and on the recommendation of a much more seasoned colleague I went to 'his' tailor who measured me in great detail and for what I'd pay for one off-the-rack suit in the US I got 2 really excellent well fitted suits and a week worth of dress shirts. For the next decade or so I would order things a couple of times a year (by sending a letter + money order; no web site then) and it would show up 6-8 of weeks later just as I needed. Even when I included "I gained 10 lbs since my last order", they adjusted perfectly.

Then I spent a good while where suits weren't the 'style', didn't order and lost those contacts. Not that I need one now, but it'd be nice to have 1 suit that really fit and looked good for less than US$1k.

You did what I did, but 30 years ago, hats off. I've had a few suits made by my tailor and some were well crafted, others, well, let's leave it at that. I would say, outside of SE Asia, $1k is the middle ground between too expensive for a made-to-measure suit and too cheap for a bespoke suit.

As I see it, it is more fun to have distinctive garments made. I had a shirt made inspired by a shirt I saw Fonda wear in a Western movie, a denim jacket seen in a Paul Newman interview. It was a lot of fun, but dealing with the tailor took some tenacity and a certain unusual desire to wear those clothes.

it is more fun to have distinctive garments made

On a trip to Korea, one of the team had an entire suite of outfits made inspired by the movie "Electric Cowboy". Outstanding quality. These apparently made him wildly popular is several SFO clubs, esp in the Castro.

When I used to sometimes get suits etc. made, I went into a tailor on trips to Asia. Presumably, assuming your measurements didn't change much, you could reorder things and get them pretty close though I never did that.

Just sending your measurements will essentially give you something semi-custom. When a tailor takes your measurements, you usually go back and they do a little bit of nipping and tucking of a suit before you take it away. Other articles of clothing like coats require less precision.

Quality isn't the same everywhere. I'd heard often from my colleagues about inexpensive tailored clothes they got in Asia. So when I was working in Dubai, I went to a tailor to get some shirts made. They measured my arms and neck then told me the shirts would be ready in 3 days. When I got the shirts, the collar and sleeve length were perfect, but the rest of the fit was comically bad. I only wore the shirts with a jacket on to hide the sloppiness of the fit.

You got exactly what you were measured for… which might as well have been off the rack since every department store sells shirts by neck size and sleeve length

I love replicas/knockoffs of high quality. I live in China and I can get say Salomon, Nike ACG and North Face Purple Label for maybe 1/8-1/6th of the retail price of the real deal. And the product is indistinguishable, in some cases may be produced in the same factory.

Being both a craftsman and having worked luxury handbag retail, I can tell you right now that I could spot the difference in construction quality and after a couple months of wear, the disatrous difference. I also highly doubt that the 800$ price tag reflects the overhead , advertising, packaging, retail store markup required to run the store and the salary + commission it takes a dedicated salesperson to go through the special order process it takes to sell one of these bags.

Isn't this a market catering to people who wouldn't be savvy enough to know the difference?

Yes, however this article is sporting the idea that the only difference between the designer product and the downmarket product is the unjustified inflated pricing.

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