It’s kind of entertaining to observe on social media in a way that it doesn’t impact me too much because I wasn’t really going around buying luxury brand items anyway, and the stuff that I would be interested in isn’t really worth the effort of having to chase down a supplier and procure it myself for each and every ‘thing’.
Its interesting. I was actually blown away that they are actually made in China.
I saw a $28,000 USD handbag on the news about tariffs. At that price I was kind of expecting some Parisian craftsman to be making it by hand or something, not made in a sweatshop…… then again I know nothing about handbags
Some products are outsourced, some higher end stuff will never be. E.g Swiss watches of a certain tier
Lower end stuff like cosmetics, perfume, etc. Street fashion? 100pct.
Also the factories aren’t outing themselves. They’d lose business to their customers. Why do that? What you’re seeing aren’t the direct suppliers, they might be a tier down， they might be competition etc.
Some of the pricing is in a range of possibility, others seem too high ie guesswork.
All in all, take it with a grain of salt. Some truth, some exaggeration, some not true.
Yes, China makes a lot of the world’s goods and the retailer markup on them is insane.
This is why all of the “your MAGA hats are going to cost $200!” comments are laughable. Even if you pay a 250% tariff on the imported good cost, you aren’t going to increase the sale price by 250%. Its probably a small fraction of that.
If you were ever on Teemu, you have a good feeling for what retailers in the US actually pay for their Chinese manufactured goods.
So, overall this trade war is awful and is going to hurt a lot of people but the fact that a lot of these luxury brands and retailers are getting exposed for price gouging is nice.
I mean it’s not true is it? People blindly believe everything they see on social media these days.
I’ve seen some TikToks claiming that Hermes bags are made in China, shipped to France for the “made in France” tag to be added and then sold. The footage in these videos is clearly from factories producing cheap knock-offs.
As for high-street stuff. Of course that is all made in China and I thought that was well known.
Don’t believe everything you see on TikTok. China makes high quality knock-offs that use many of the same materials and are of a comparable quality, but Birkenstocks for example aren’t made anywhere except Germany, and Birkin bags aren’t made in China despite the claims made in those videos.
Here’s a really good video posted by a guy that writes about the fashion industry for the NYT, and is kind of Twitter’s go-to source on this kind of stuff:
I like the point the guy makes at the end, that China should just start making its own labels with its own designs instead of copying everyone else’s.
Edit: Here’s a longer, more detailed thread by the same guy that goes into the precise differences between the knockoff bags made China and the real ones made in France:
I’m from Italy and I know myself some Italian friends that work for small subcontractor factory that produce for some luxury brands. I can’t deny that maybe some products are made in China, I really don’t know, but Italian craftsmanship exist!
Please don’t believe a clearly propaganda tiktoks, in your opinion these Chinese fabrics will risk the subcontracts with LV or Gucci only for showing you the reality? I know also a Gucci attorney and they don’t joke 😂 They are showing you the counterfeits, maybe good quality but still fake!!!
Not surprised. I get the impression that “luxury brands” are really just name brands with multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns and expert legal teams. Nike and their 500+ dollar shoes come to mind. If you understand supply and demand and you have a hold on a market, then value is really just an idea that can be imposed on the buyer.
Low production mixed with high name recognition will make anything seem like a rarity.
Something tells me they are scammers trying to scam. Why not claim you make high end products when you make good enough knock offs and then use the confusion with the tariffs to sell more. They could be telling the truth but something tells me they likely are not.
It’s interesting but without any real effect. If you think that some luxury brand stopped some employer discount because customer want to be reassured to be the only one to afford the products you will understand how much the simple brand counts.
Same bag without the brand but affordable will probably raise the price
This has been a well-known tidbit for years, tbh. It’s no secret that the price comes from the luxury branding, not the item. But I feel like it kinda slips under the radar a lot. So I’m not surprised because yeah, duh, but I am surprised they came to TikTok to expose it. China truly has stopped giving half the fucks they used to about their relationship with America’s government. The direct call to American people of “you are being cheated” is a pretty effective tactic tbh. And an interesting and effective way to get around the tariffs of an unpopular president.
“Any manufacturer producing for big name brands is likely under strict contractual obligations to not disclose that fact, Hao Dong, a senior lecturer in operations and project management at the University of Southampton, told CNN. They definitely wouldn’t be publicly selling those big-name products on the internet”.
Nikes are a good example of things that are made for pennies but only worth money because of the brand. Everyone knows their expensive shoes are made by people in poverty, and their cellphone is not made in North America.
As to actually luxury brands, I don’t think it matters to 99 percent of people.
Luxury brands are the dumbest shit going and the epitome of having ‘more money than brains’…There cannot be enough of a jump in quality between a well-made item and a luxury item to justify such exorbitant prices. A decently made bag, pair of pants, or shoes are going to carry your shit, cover your ass, and get you from place to place just as well as one’s with high-end labelling.
Good, fuck luxury products and their fake nature. Bullshit prices, for bullshit products made with fake scarcety to make people think they are worth it. I hope all the giants collapse.
I’m actually glad this is coming to light. Been in fashion merchandising since 2010 and the way these brands have been deceiving customers about production sources while charging astronomical prices is straight up robbery.
China has been doing that for a long time since Chinese investors and businesses bought and owned few of luxury designer houses can produce high- quality knock-offs for a lot cheaper versus the real brands. They have a black market in China, some in the Philippines.
China bought few fashion design houses in Italy, and they can produce their products in China, or they have a manufacturing company that produce the real designer clothes, handbags, etcetera.
That’s why most of the Western airports, ports especially in Europe, the US, Australia are cracking down on fakes and elite fakes (top tier quality fake goods) against the real designer brands.
The luxury brands manufacturers use China’s manufacturing factories for low cost of labor and the luxury brands use their raw materials. It’s the luxury brands suppliers that source these natural material and other proprietary products they manufacture. However, the designer luxury brands supply the designs, ideas and sell the finalized products to the consumers all around the world.
This trade war is getting ridiculous to the point of absurdity but it already happened for produce coming from Mexico. And we will see a huge price hike for goods we buy less. Only those who can afford are the rich, not the middle class and the poor. Orange cheeto guy is causing this impact of inflation and how we buy and consume these goods.
That goes to brands that were bought by Chinese investors in the past especially American brands like Smithfield, Virginia ham in the laSt few years. Some people seem to forget about these warnings from the Chinese buying companies that are almost going under for a cheap prices to invest and on these companies to take advantage of the supply. These tariffs instituted by Orange cheeto are escalating to a trade war the US and all of the countries. These tariffs will not be good for us and will consume less than what we normally consume.
The US companies has to invest partnerships in South American countrieS and other states that have lower minimum wages than the highest average minimum wage workers, facilities, factories that are homegrown in many states. We still need to produce food, medicines, pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, microchips, and goods that we excel on producing.
It’s very good and useful for consumer market actually. Just buy good quality items at a reasonable price. Designer labels are often overpriced. You’re mostly paying for the logo. If showing off and chasing a certain social status is your thing, then by all means, keep buying them. But if you’re looking for real value, focus on quality over branding. At the end of the day, silent wealth is the real class.
I don’t buy it. These luxury brands cater to rich people, and I’m pretty sure if they thought they were getting bent, they would sue. These luxury brands wouldn’t risk that. The last thing you want to do is piss off a rich Karen that’s doesn’t have shit to do all day.
My wife used to work in product development at Burberry and has visited factories in China, India and Italy. I think these tiktoks are just rage bait and marketing.
First of all, there is a massive misconception as to what Chinese manufacturing actually is. People just associate with cheap knock offs but a huge amount of advanced manufacturing takes place there and it can be better quality than US or EU. Over the past two decades, some of the higher end Chinese manufacturers poached much of the senior European staff to build up the domestic manufacturing base. For example, in silks China’s quality is so far ahead of Europe, as is India for embroidery. These products are also made by highly trained staff that will be paid significantly better wages than the people making your USD 5 dollar tees at Walmart.
Burberry only used to mainly produce its Burberry Brit entry level range in China at the time. The runway and main collections were still manufactured in Italy and Portugal (especially leather goods), where wages are high and so is craftsmanship. People also have little idea of how much top end fabrics, leather and other materials actually cost. Or the price difference between good and shit buttons and various other details.
The US is a huge market. But let’s not pretend like it is the only market in the world. Getting into a spiteful tit for tat and risking future work as those brands will still sell in the rest of the world doesn’t make any sense.
I didn’t know this was a thing, but anyone who didn’t automatically assume most designer stuff was made cheaply and probably in sweatshops, is most likely mentally pretty vacant.
Designer/luxury goods are about the name on the product, not how much the product cost to make. I used to know someone who was really into the whole ‘luxury’ lifestyle even though she couldn’t afford it. She was so proud of her Prada bag. It cost $2000. She could have had a better bag that she wasn’t so afraid of damaging for less than 1/10th the price, but she wouldn’t get the, “oooOOOooo I love your bag!” from all the other superficial women that would see it.
Comments
It’s kind of entertaining to observe on social media in a way that it doesn’t impact me too much because I wasn’t really going around buying luxury brand items anyway, and the stuff that I would be interested in isn’t really worth the effort of having to chase down a supplier and procure it myself for each and every ‘thing’.
Its interesting. I was actually blown away that they are actually made in China.
I saw a $28,000 USD handbag on the news about tariffs. At that price I was kind of expecting some Parisian craftsman to be making it by hand or something, not made in a sweatshop…… then again I know nothing about handbags
Hilarious
That tariffs on these doesn’t matter as much cause the margin is like 28x anyway
It’s half truths
Some products are outsourced, some higher end stuff will never be. E.g Swiss watches of a certain tier
Lower end stuff like cosmetics, perfume, etc. Street fashion? 100pct.
Also the factories aren’t outing themselves. They’d lose business to their customers. Why do that? What you’re seeing aren’t the direct suppliers, they might be a tier down， they might be competition etc.
Some of the pricing is in a range of possibility, others seem too high ie guesswork.
All in all, take it with a grain of salt. Some truth, some exaggeration, some not true.
wait what ? China doing propaganda ? how shocking …
Yes, China makes a lot of the world’s goods and the retailer markup on them is insane.
This is why all of the “your MAGA hats are going to cost $200!” comments are laughable. Even if you pay a 250% tariff on the imported good cost, you aren’t going to increase the sale price by 250%. Its probably a small fraction of that.
If you were ever on Teemu, you have a good feeling for what retailers in the US actually pay for their Chinese manufactured goods.
So, overall this trade war is awful and is going to hurt a lot of people but the fact that a lot of these luxury brands and retailers are getting exposed for price gouging is nice.
I mean it’s not true is it? People blindly believe everything they see on social media these days.
I’ve seen some TikToks claiming that Hermes bags are made in China, shipped to France for the “made in France” tag to be added and then sold. The footage in these videos is clearly from factories producing cheap knock-offs.
As for high-street stuff. Of course that is all made in China and I thought that was well known.
Lol!
Don’t believe everything you see on TikTok. China makes high quality knock-offs that use many of the same materials and are of a comparable quality, but Birkenstocks for example aren’t made anywhere except Germany, and Birkin bags aren’t made in China despite the claims made in those videos.
Here’s a really good video posted by a guy that writes about the fashion industry for the NYT, and is kind of Twitter’s go-to source on this kind of stuff:
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1912632226577330178?s=46
I like the point the guy makes at the end, that China should just start making its own labels with its own designs instead of copying everyone else’s.
Edit: Here’s a longer, more detailed thread by the same guy that goes into the precise differences between the knockoff bags made China and the real ones made in France:
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1911866349447684466?s=46
I can’t say “bitch, you thought” in Chinese, but it sounds a lot like that.
Tbh, noone buys michael kors, Gucci handbags for their quality, they only buy it just to flaunt..
I’m from Italy and I know myself some Italian friends that work for small subcontractor factory that produce for some luxury brands. I can’t deny that maybe some products are made in China, I really don’t know, but Italian craftsmanship exist!
Please don’t believe a clearly propaganda tiktoks, in your opinion these Chinese fabrics will risk the subcontracts with LV or Gucci only for showing you the reality? I know also a Gucci attorney and they don’t joke 😂 They are showing you the counterfeits, maybe good quality but still fake!!!
Not surprised. I get the impression that “luxury brands” are really just name brands with multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns and expert legal teams. Nike and their 500+ dollar shoes come to mind. If you understand supply and demand and you have a hold on a market, then value is really just an idea that can be imposed on the buyer.
Low production mixed with high name recognition will make anything seem like a rarity.
It was bound to happen lol
Good, fuck um. If it isn’t true it should be real easy to give us video tours of your actual non-chinese factories. Somehow I doubt most if any will.
Anyone that believed china equals fake or cheap were truly delulu
Something tells me they are scammers trying to scam. Why not claim you make high end products when you make good enough knock offs and then use the confusion with the tariffs to sell more. They could be telling the truth but something tells me they likely are not.
Luxury brands have always been a waste. It’s costs like $80 bucks to manufacture a Gucci bag. Tiffany has about 1000% profit margin.
It’s interesting but without any real effect. If you think that some luxury brand stopped some employer discount because customer want to be reassured to be the only one to afford the products you will understand how much the simple brand counts.
Same bag without the brand but affordable will probably raise the price
This has been a well-known tidbit for years, tbh. It’s no secret that the price comes from the luxury branding, not the item. But I feel like it kinda slips under the radar a lot. So I’m not surprised because yeah, duh, but I am surprised they came to TikTok to expose it. China truly has stopped giving half the fucks they used to about their relationship with America’s government. The direct call to American people of “you are being cheated” is a pretty effective tactic tbh. And an interesting and effective way to get around the tariffs of an unpopular president.
It’s interesting that a country run by supposed communist “peasants” (words of VP Vance) has to teach supposed rich capitalists how stupid they are.
Is it really exposing when “made in China” is printed right on em
It’s a scam.
“Any manufacturer producing for big name brands is likely under strict contractual obligations to not disclose that fact, Hao Dong, a senior lecturer in operations and project management at the University of Southampton, told CNN. They definitely wouldn’t be publicly selling those big-name products on the internet”.
On no! So anyway…
Nikes are a good example of things that are made for pennies but only worth money because of the brand. Everyone knows their expensive shoes are made by people in poverty, and their cellphone is not made in North America.
As to actually luxury brands, I don’t think it matters to 99 percent of people.
Shock and then amusement
Luxury brands are the dumbest shit going and the epitome of having ‘more money than brains’…There cannot be enough of a jump in quality between a well-made item and a luxury item to justify such exorbitant prices. A decently made bag, pair of pants, or shoes are going to carry your shit, cover your ass, and get you from place to place just as well as one’s with high-end labelling.
You can’t just think every thing from China is cheaply and poorly made.
It’s cheaper to make.
Doesn’t make it crap automatically.
Skills can be taught.
no problem – force the sheeple to wake up
you would have to be a grade a moron to be surprised by this, or care
Amusement.
Before or after I stopped laughing?
I just bought some fake LV designer bags and put on some fake Labubu. It cost me $10 total for the small sling bag. 😂
Who did not know that?
I think it’s a mistake on China’s part. Just asking for labor to be moved out.
Good, fuck luxury products and their fake nature. Bullshit prices, for bullshit products made with fake scarcety to make people think they are worth it. I hope all the giants collapse.
I’m actually glad this is coming to light. Been in fashion merchandising since 2010 and the way these brands have been deceiving customers about production sources while charging astronomical prices is straight up robbery.
Everybody with a sense for highfashion is shocked pikachoo face
My thoughts are this should not be a surprise to anyone.
China has been doing that for a long time since Chinese investors and businesses bought and owned few of luxury designer houses can produce high- quality knock-offs for a lot cheaper versus the real brands. They have a black market in China, some in the Philippines.
China bought few fashion design houses in Italy, and they can produce their products in China, or they have a manufacturing company that produce the real designer clothes, handbags, etcetera.
That’s why most of the Western airports, ports especially in Europe, the US, Australia are cracking down on fakes and elite fakes (top tier quality fake goods) against the real designer brands.
The luxury brands manufacturers use China’s manufacturing factories for low cost of labor and the luxury brands use their raw materials. It’s the luxury brands suppliers that source these natural material and other proprietary products they manufacture. However, the designer luxury brands supply the designs, ideas and sell the finalized products to the consumers all around the world.
This trade war is getting ridiculous to the point of absurdity but it already happened for produce coming from Mexico. And we will see a huge price hike for goods we buy less. Only those who can afford are the rich, not the middle class and the poor. Orange cheeto guy is causing this impact of inflation and how we buy and consume these goods.
That goes to brands that were bought by Chinese investors in the past especially American brands like Smithfield, Virginia ham in the laSt few years. Some people seem to forget about these warnings from the Chinese buying companies that are almost going under for a cheap prices to invest and on these companies to take advantage of the supply. These tariffs instituted by Orange cheeto are escalating to a trade war the US and all of the countries. These tariffs will not be good for us and will consume less than what we normally consume.
The US companies has to invest partnerships in South American countrieS and other states that have lower minimum wages than the highest average minimum wage workers, facilities, factories that are homegrown in many states. We still need to produce food, medicines, pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, microchips, and goods that we excel on producing.
What “exposing”?? This is nothing new that we haven’t known.
It’s very good and useful for consumer market actually. Just buy good quality items at a reasonable price. Designer labels are often overpriced. You’re mostly paying for the logo. If showing off and chasing a certain social status is your thing, then by all means, keep buying them. But if you’re looking for real value, focus on quality over branding. At the end of the day, silent wealth is the real class.
I don’t buy it. These luxury brands cater to rich people, and I’m pretty sure if they thought they were getting bent, they would sue. These luxury brands wouldn’t risk that. The last thing you want to do is piss off a rich Karen that’s doesn’t have shit to do all day.
If anyone is surprised they’re morons.
I don’t even know what you mean. Exposed who, how?
My wife used to work in product development at Burberry and has visited factories in China, India and Italy. I think these tiktoks are just rage bait and marketing.
First of all, there is a massive misconception as to what Chinese manufacturing actually is. People just associate with cheap knock offs but a huge amount of advanced manufacturing takes place there and it can be better quality than US or EU. Over the past two decades, some of the higher end Chinese manufacturers poached much of the senior European staff to build up the domestic manufacturing base. For example, in silks China’s quality is so far ahead of Europe, as is India for embroidery. These products are also made by highly trained staff that will be paid significantly better wages than the people making your USD 5 dollar tees at Walmart.
Burberry only used to mainly produce its Burberry Brit entry level range in China at the time. The runway and main collections were still manufactured in Italy and Portugal (especially leather goods), where wages are high and so is craftsmanship. People also have little idea of how much top end fabrics, leather and other materials actually cost. Or the price difference between good and shit buttons and various other details.
The US is a huge market. But let’s not pretend like it is the only market in the world. Getting into a spiteful tit for tat and risking future work as those brands will still sell in the rest of the world doesn’t make any sense.
I didn’t know this was a thing, but anyone who didn’t automatically assume most designer stuff was made cheaply and probably in sweatshops, is most likely mentally pretty vacant.
None of my luxury items are made in China so I found it pretty surprising
Designer/luxury goods are about the name on the product, not how much the product cost to make. I used to know someone who was really into the whole ‘luxury’ lifestyle even though she couldn’t afford it. She was so proud of her Prada bag. It cost $2000. She could have had a better bag that she wasn’t so afraid of damaging for less than 1/10th the price, but she wouldn’t get the, “oooOOOooo I love your bag!” from all the other superficial women that would see it.
Hard to expose what you already knew.
100% fair.