<p><strong><font size="2"><em>…wearing fake goods makes you feel a fake yourself, and causes you to be more dishonest in other matters than you would otherwise be.&#160; (From <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16422414?story_id=16422414">The Economist)</a></em></font></strong></p>  <p><img title="IMG_6612_thumb1" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px" height="699" alt="IMG_6612_thumb1" src="http://ionlyweardresses.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_6612_thumb1.jpg" width="525" border="0" /></p>  <p><font size="2"><img title="IMG_66181" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px" height="394" alt="IMG_66181" src="http://ionlyweardresses.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_66181.jpg" width="525" border="0" /> </font></p>  <p align="center"><font size="2">{Grecian Goddess </font><a href="http://ionlyweardresses.com/2010/05/the-bluebird-of-happiness/"><font size="2">dress</font></a><font size="2">}</font></p>  <p><font size="2">Recently, I ran across this fabulous true rule over at <em><a href="http://whatiwore.tumblr.com/post/592338689/what-i-wore-americana">What I Wore:</a></em></font></p>  <p><font size="2"><em>I love buying handbags abroad - You can always answer a query or compliment with “I got it in Hong Kong! Paris! London!” and you always get to carry around the memories of a good trip.</em>&#160;</font></p>  <p><font size="2">I whole heartedly agree.&#160; One of my favorite dresses came from our trip to Greece and I love telling people I got it abroad.&#160; A significant trend I notice when shopping aboard is the use of markets – especially in Asia.&#160; I am extremely conflicted about this because most of these markets specialize in selling counterfeit designer goods – with or without logos and insignias.&#160; I am also conflicted because a lot of bloggers feature these finds on their blog and yes, I think that can be a bad thing.<img title="3900628598_794937104b_b" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px" height="718" alt="3900628598_794937104b_b" src="http://ionlyweardresses.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/3900628598_794937104b_b.jpg" width="525" border="0" /></font></p>  <p><font size="2"><img title="4441571523_05b11e1ccb_b" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px" height="350" alt="4441571523_05b11e1ccb_b" src="http://ionlyweardresses.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/4441571523_05b11e1ccb_b.jpg" width="525" border="0" /></font></p>  <p><font size="2">I noticed this trend first on <em>What I Wore</em> and was super excited when I got to Hong Kong and got to see the night market with my own eyes.&#160; The night markets are a neon fantasy with endless rows of stalls selling everything from clothes, to bolts of cloth, food, remedies, toys and especially important, jewelry, clothes, shoes, sunglasses and purses.&#160; I gobbled up a few purses and wallets – I rarely like names emblazoned across my clothing so I didn’t indulge in getting anything with a fake insignia and I always called wearing “Chinatown” fakes a really tacky thing to do.&#160; I focused on shape and material and grabbed the sunglasses above and cool hard shell and leather purses.&#160; </font></p>  <p><font size="2">The problem is, just like Jessica’s bag, and my sunglasses, this stuff is a high-quality fake.&#160; Granted, I don’t look at the bag above or the sunglasses in my photo and say, “those are Brand X!” but they belong to a designer/design company who I’m sure would recognize them and more than likely has them designed in factories in Hong Kong.&#160; We didn’t pick them with the intention of getting a replica item (I could never see Jessica advocating or wearing fakes) but in creating a polished and high-end look, advocating buying from a night-market means advocating buying what is in fact replica merchandise.</font></p>  <p><font size="2">As I’ve gotten more serious about studying dress history and fashion law, I’ve become more and more conflicted about Hong Kong Market, Chinatown or any “night-market” finds.&#160; They are not the same as hand-made or salvaged items from a flea market – they are from a factory and if the right eye were to spy them, I bet they could pin point the original designer of the bag above for me.&#160; The human cost of “night market” finds is high and ranges from the money lost by the designer to the workers in the factory that make these items – that discussion is </font><font size="2">saved for another post.&#160; </font></p>  <p><img title="201026stp002" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px" height="457" alt="201026stp002" src="http://ionlyweardresses.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/201026stp002.jpg" width="300" border="0" /> </p>  <p><font size="2">I am really struck by the cultural meanings of wearing fake merchandise and the slippery meaning of “authenticity” when we are talking about merchandise like the ones in the picture above – no “Prada” or “LV” stamped on its side. I was especially struck when <em>The Economist </em>ran an </font><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16422414?story_id=16422414"><font size="2">article</font></a><font size="2"> describing how subjects who wore fakes (with an identifiable logo, in this case Chloé) “felt fake” about themselves,&#160; and were more dishonest in other matters than they normally would be:</font></p>  <p><em><strong><font size="2">Dr Gino and her colleagues provided a group of female volunteers with Chloé sunglasses that cost about $300 a pair, supposedly as part of a marketing study. They told some of the volunteers that the sunglasses were real, and others that they were counterfeit. They then asked the volunteers to perform pencil-and-paper mathematical quizzes for which they could earn up to $10, depending on how many questions they got right. The participants were spun a yarn about how doing these quizzes would allow them to judge the comfort and quality of the glasses.</font></strong></em></p>  <p><em><strong><font size="2">Crucially, the quizzes were presented as “honour tests” that participants would mark themselves, reporting their own scores to the study’s organisers. The quiz papers were unnumbered and thus appeared to be untraceable, and were thrown away at the end of the study. In fact, though, each had one unique question on it, meaning that it could be identified—and the papers were recovered and marked again by the researchers after they had been discarded.</font></strong></em></p>  <p><font size="2">The results were really surprising:</font></p>  <p><strong><em><font size="2">Of participants told that they were wearing authentic designer sunglasses, 30% were found to have cheated, reporting that they had solved more problems than was actually the case. Of those who thought they were wearing fake sunglasses, by contrast, about 70% cheated.</font></em></strong></p>  <p><strong><em><font size="2">The results were similar when the women completed a computer-based task that involved counting dots on a screen. In this case, the location of the dots determined the financial reward. The women who thought they were wearing counterfeits lied about those locations more often than those who did not.</font></em></strong></p>  <p><strong><em><font size="2">In a third part of the study, the participants were asked questions about the honesty and ethics of people they knew and people in general. Those who thought they had knock-offs were more likely to say that people were dishonest and unethical.</font></em></strong></p>  <p><font size="2">Dr. Francesca Gino, the researcher running the study, also looked at self-alienation that results from wearing fakes:</font></p>  <p><strong><em><font size="2">It looked, then, as if believing they were wearing fakes made people feel like fakes. To test that hypothesis, Dr Gino and her colleagues ran the experiment again, this time including a test meant to detect self-alienation. They asked the participants if they agreed with statements like, “right now, I feel as if I don’t know myself very well”. Those who thought they were wearing fakes did indeed feel more alienated from themselves than those who knew they were wearing the real things.</font></em></strong></p>  <p><font size="2">So what can we learn?</font></p>  <p><strong><em><font size="2">The moral, then, is that people’s sense of right and wrong influences the way they feel and behave. Even when it is someone else who has made them behave badly, it can affect their subsequent behaviour. Next time you are offered fake accessories, beware: wearing them can make you feel like a bad person, not a better one.</font></em></strong></p>  <p><font size="2">So what does this mean for me?&#160; I loved strolling around the Hong Kong night market but I doubt I will ever buy any clothing or accessories from these hot spots.&#160; I don’t take a militant stance about the stuff featured in the photos (Jessica’s bag, my sunglasses) since they are less problematic to me than the fake Chanel handbags being sold in Hong Kong - but I am thinking twice about wearing the stuff I have bought.</font></p>  <p><font size="2"></font></p>  <p><font size="2"></font></p>  <p><font size="2"></font></p>  <p><font size="2"></font></p>