Ode on a fake Goyard wallet (or, just a few notes for a picture taken years ago) [I worry these entries are too short, so I want to work harder, but I think it is good for engagement to be regular]

▣ A piece of the True Cross, one of the toe bones of Saint Sebastian… ▣

▣ I bought the wallet in Shenzhen, I think. Too many years have gone by to say for sure. I can only go back through old pictures and check for it peeking out of a breast pocket. So, it might have been Beijing. It could have been Shanghai. I was with A■■■■, I’m sure. Maybe I was showing off to her by bargaining the price down to something I considered civilized. The actual reason for buying it is more difficult to explain. I liked the design. Maybe I could have gone into the Goyard store in Takashimaya and bought a wallet, but it would have been ruined me. I bought it as a souvenir, I could say, most simply. A fake Goyard wallet is more special to me than the authentic product would have been. I would not bore you with an ode to an actual Goyard wallet; I can spin something out of a fake Goyard wallet. I mean that I might more clearly signal my taste and sophistication with a fake Goyard wallet than an authentic Goyard wallet. ▭ I carried it often for a few years. I received a compliment on it once from ■■■■ ■■■■■■, who I ran into at a bar in Arakawa, the victim of unsteady local fixers. I said, “It’s fake.” It wasn’t necessary, but, again, that was part of the story I wanted to tell. ▭ The wallet is no longer as beautiful as it once was. I regret that I used it. The pointillist chevrons faded. It was, at first, in a way that suggested hard use, and which mimicked the wear you might observe on an authentic item (it was made in the same way, after all, from similar materials); and they are gone now, so that it is merely a red wallet, only identifiable as a replica by the heat-stamped logo inside. ▭ It is authentic because it is inauthentic. I don’t want to spend too much time twisting language here. I only mean that it is more significant to me as a product of Chinese manufacturing prowess at the beginning of this century—and that it is a counterfeit of a French luxury good is merely part of its provenance. I also mean that it is authentically my fake Goyard wallet. ▣

▣ There is in the world of fashion replicas an ancillary sort of knowledge: you must know the original product, and what marks it as genuine, but you must also understand what marks fakes as being of high quality. For the chevrons to be touching on a Goyard product will not guarantee that it will fool anyone; it is proof that it came from the best counterfeiter. ▭ It never clear what the one-to-one replica replicates. ▭ I am fascinated by that world, which is dominated, at least online, by young men and women that live far from centers of fashion, who have good taste and no money. Their Taobao purchases are not intended to impress anyone but other fashion replica hounds, who are the only ones that will note the clumsy stitching on the inside of their Comme des Garçons polo shirt. ▣

▣ There is from the Chinese experience of consumer capitalism, and also as a result of the particular Chinese mode of manufacturing, something that is slowly spreading to the wider world. I am being too vague. I struggle to put it into words. The barriers between categories, or classes, of consumer goods can be broken down, I might say, or must be broken down; I could say that traditional signifiers of taste or wealth are impossible to maintain in a country where the fashion industry has gone to seek the cheapest, quickest manufacturing processes. There is not much interest in the idea of exclusivity. The designer bag or sneaker can be universal. It might express a vague interest in wealth, but could not signal actual wealth, nor taste, nor proximity to those with taste and money. An item becomes more desirable as it becomes less exclusive; the most popular bag is the most popular bag. ▭ Essays must have been written about this: All of this has remade luxury consumption, as releasing eye-catching designs, which are almost certainly intended for counterfeiters (and playing with the idea of the authentic and fake, with the mimetic spillover of the replica factories, in intentionally misspelled brand names, in garish, purposely shocking patterns or colors…), feeds demand of the real thing. There is no clear division between authentic and inauthentic, I could say, or there won’t be for much longer. There is no clear division between replica and fast-fashion tribute. ▣

▣ I must have had in mind some contrast—the cheapest brand of Chinese cigarettes laid over an exclusive French fashion product. I might be giving myself too much credit. ▣