Magnolia Lane

There are quite a few "authenticate this" posts, and stories of unwittingly buying fakes. We might be able to answer a lot of our own questions better (and ward off bad purchases) if we had photos of real thing to compare to. While I realize it's impossible to have every model of every brand, it seems like there are a lot of great generic photos out there at store sites that we could perhaps post, as well as some of the photos from ioffer of the latest fakes (as a What Not To Buy thing, lol). I personally find browsing ioffer's photos a great educational tool. I see what hardware is a red flag and what features are wrong (the counterfeiters seem to try to improvise on some things, maybe their own designers get a little antsy, lol).

Plus, with all the great bags everyone here has, we could probably build something decent. What do you think?

boysRsmelly

It sounds like a good idea... but like you said, it would be impossible to cover everything. I know a few designers pretty well... but sometimes I have to go to an outside source to find more info if it is a style I am not familiar with.

We could always post links to our favorite guides... there are several on ebay that are very helpful, like Fashionphile's for LV.

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Magnolia Lane

What I was thinking is that a stickied library (perhaps one in each purse section) of photos of the most popular models and their accompanying fakes, as well as links to guides, would be useful. We don't need to see every bag, just typical bags from that brand to get an idea of what the overall quality, hardware, printing, etc., looks like.

Such a reference, without extraneous chat, would go well with a separate "authenticate this" post on a particular purse.

boysRsmelly

So... we could have an authentication area under each designer section (like subforums) and then have a "Read this" stickied at the top that has some general "rules" and examples and then links to any guides that we know of. And then if someone isn't finding what they are looking for, then they can start a new thread with pics of their suspected fake so everyone can look at it.

Is that what you mean? LOL! Sorry, I'm just trying to follow you here. Perhaps we need to PM Jennifer with the idea... since she would have to set it up.

Perhaps we could get volunteers to write each of the little guides... I think there's at least one "expert" on here for each of the designers that we talk about.

__________________
Current Wishlist
Balenciaga Mini Classique or Shoulder
See by Chloe Animalia Keychain

My Blog Posts

Magnolia Lane

I really don't know what I mean, LOL. Just that we could benefit from some good photos of the most popular bags and some checkpoints of what to look for so we can be our own best defense. I acknowledge that would be a lot of work, though. And I'm certainly no expert on any brand myself.

Akemi

That's something I'd love to find! A great idea and an excellent tool for new buyers specially! I hope it will be come true! Thanks!