Polene

[Floofydawg]

I'm after a Polene Numero Dix in green but I can't bring myself to pay the increased price for it (they were £360 the last time I looked!) What are the chances of picking up a genuine one second hand, and what are the best sites to check? There are quite a few fakes on Vinted.

Anyone?

I'd consider looking at something else over secondhand. As you've said there's loads of fakes, any platform with some reliability with authenticity like Vestiaire will charge quite a high commission so the price difference probably won't be much. And tbh, Polene quality was never all that stellar but it's nose dived noticeably recently that even the die hard devotees are complaining about it.

Ok thanks, that doesn't suggest it's worth buying then.

Are bag brands at the poline level copied? I thought it was only high end bags if maybe £1500 up that companies bothered to copy

Everything that trends on social media these days gets copied, it's not to do with just high end anymore and much more about popularity and it's even down to what's highly popular within subsets. The bulk of it comes from China so it does tend to be what's popular in Asia, eg. Moncler is huge there but less so here.

@botemp

I guess it comes down to quality. I've seen copies that are identical to LV, Chanel, YSL etc. but they cost £200-£400. Miles cheaper than the original but a price that would make it pointless to copy a polene.

When I say identical I mean scrutinise next to the original and you'll find no differences. To the extent that people question if they are from the same factory and the factory is producing over runs.

Yes, you're talking about 1:1 replicas, that's mostly reserved for the top tier brands.

Then there's grey market -made in the same factory, tends to be brands that manufacture in China like Michael Kors. The factory will make a few extra to make some extra money by selling them to local dealers. Brands have mostly clamped down on this by rationing the identifying pieces like hardware and other materials.

Then there's copies which range from very good to exceptionally terrible. It's essentially the Chinese terracotta army business model. The replica makers usually have the original as reference then another factory copies the replica and another factory copies the copy and so forth. So they're all making the same thing but end up with many variations.

Since you asked about copies rather than replicas I assumed you were specifically referring to the latter category so that's my mistake as replicas/copy does gets used interchangeably. It's possible that there are Polene replicas, the investment in an original wouldn't be very high and a good copy does tend to be more profitable (Chinese consumers can return them) but I assume all the ones people are buying off Ali and The Gate are of the copy of copy quality.

@botemp
So the perfect ones are 'replicas'?
Why would anyone make replicas of £350 bag? Replicas tend to cost £200 +. It isn't enough of a saving surely. Whereas paying £250 for a replica of a £3k bag might seem worth it to some.

It's just a response to the demand of the local markets in Asia. A Polene bag will be more expensive there and considered premium considering average salaries. Replicas tend to cost around 10% of the original. There's a lot of margin in designer handbags so it's definitely easier to scale back and produce it for those prices, yes. A Polene replica would probably be cheaper by cutting corners in production and materials and producing at a very large scale. I don't know what they'd charge but maybe a third of the price and I'd anticipate the copies to start at £30 and made from fake or composite leather.

It's all illegal in China but it's not really enforced so it all operates like legitimate businesses. They'll occasionally raid a factory when a French or Italian dignitary is there for a state visit but there's thousands of factories and it's a major part of the economy. With continued worsening international relations with the West they're probably going to care even less.

With the ease of access now online it's just going to keep on growing on a global scale and it's very much polluting the secondhand eco system. There was an article in the Guardian a few months ago about vintage dealers coming across replicas which was previously unheard of. Special edition printed t-shirt type things that only really have value to a very niche community, but there was enough demand so new t-shirts were replicated and aged, some of the better ones used vintage tees but added fake labels, etc.

I'm not sure about UK Vinted as I'm in Europe so have access to the European one which is a larger marketplace, but I'd estimate that the vast majority of goods on there are new now. Subsequently the whole sustainability spiel feels off, especially since Vinted Europe is pushing for more designer goods with a very poor authentication service while having had a terrible track record of having a lot of fakes (of all categories) on their platform for years.