First off, you see all these ads, right? Fashion Nova trying to sneak in next to Chanel at Nordstrom? Like, come ON. Anyway, Nordstrom *does* actually sell Chanel, real Chanel, which is a whole different ballgame than what we’re *really* talking about. ‘Cause let’s be real, most of us ain’t dropping a down payment on a house for a jacket.
Then you got places like Grailed peddling “Chanel High Tops” and… yeah, okay, maybe they’re legit, maybe they’re not. The internet is a Wild West, man. You gotta be careful.
But the *real* juicy stuff? It’s the replica market. This is where things get… interesting. I saw this thing saying “Every Chanel collection is a unique masterpiece,” and like, yeah, duh. Karl Lagerfeld was a GENIUS. But the *thing* is, that genius has inspired, well, a *lot* of “inspiration.”
And this is where we get into the A-grade, AAA-grade, OMG-is-it-real-grade replicas. I saw someone saying “A-grade replicas are the best, and the best A-grade replica can almost be real.” Almost real! That’s the key, right? The quest for the *almost* real.
Now, I’m not saying you should go buy fake stuff. Morally, it’s kinda… eh. But also, I kinda get it. Like, who *wouldn’t* want to rock a Chanel-esque look without having to sell their kidney? Plus, have you *seen* some of these replicas? Some of the stitching is better than the *real* stuff, maybe not always though. Depends on who you’re gettin’ it from.
And then there’s the whole Vinted side of things. You’ll come across Chanel camisas & tops in the most random of places. You gotta watch out for the B goods and C goods, though. Those are the obviously fake ones. You want to go for the A-grade stuff, the ones that are *almost* real.
But really, at the end of the day, isn’t it about the look? About feeling confident and stylish? I mean, Viard’s collections are inspired by impressionists, and I bet some of those artists were broke as heck, so they probably wore whatever they could get their hands on, right?
