(Photo: Staci Schwartz for the Village Voice)

I appreciate a good critique. And so, when I began Lynn Yaeger’s critic of the Murakami Exhibit and shop at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the Village Voice, I was right with her.

She speaks of the Murakami/ Marc Jacobs collaboration as resulting in “cutesy-poo Louis Vuitton handbags”.

Of the fake Canal Street set up by Louis Vuitton outside the museum the night of the Brooklyn Ball, Lynn said:

“Actors impersonating impoverished illegal immigrants trying to make a living? Who came up with this swell idea? Not since Marie Antoinette dressed as a shepherdess has such blatant bad taste, such revolting hauteur infected a social gathering. (Maybe it’s a French thing?) In any case, this grotesque Potemkin Village is torn down by the time I visit, so instead of expressing my outrage at fake fake-bag booths, I’m battling toddlers to get a look at Murakami’s cartoon films.”

And while I may not agree with her analysis, I certianly can see how she gets there.

She shoots the whole “Lonesome Cowboy” and “Hiropon” easy targets… rips on the outrageous prices, and items in the store such as the “hideously glommed-up gold number called the Marilyn”.

That’s all fine with me…

But here’s where she loses me. Lynn goes on to tell the story of her frustration as she sat on the waitlist for a Louis Vuitton Murakami Cherry Blossom bag back in 2003. Apparently, her name never came up… and so she settled for the Cherry Blossom Canal Street special pictured above.

“In the end, I went down to Canal Street, the same ratty Canal Street that Vuitton thought was so witty to make fun of. And there I found a wonderful fake flowered satchel for $35, which I thought a cool guy like Murakami would probably get a kick out of, since the nameless third-world artisan who made it added some flourishes that LV hadn’t thought of, like silver faux-snakeskin trim and mirror studs.”

From there, it’s just down hill… trolling Canal Street & eBay for current fakes and ripping on Louis Vuitton’s anti-counterfeit educational measures.

Come on Lynn. If all this bugs you so much, why would you ever buy a fake?

If you really want to beat the system, you don’t buy a fake. You know that. A fake (besides all the regularly argued reasons why it is just bad- not to mention illegal) is tacky and inauthentic. By inauthentic, I mean the wearer looks fake. The carrier wants other people to believe that the very things that bug you- that they got through the wait list, paid the ridiculous prices, and actually like the cutes-poo design. All this is a high price for the collateral damage that the counterfeit market produces.

If you want to beat the system, you buy an authentic Louis Vuitton… at a discount price- by buying pre-owned. It’s legal, it’s relatively economical (if you’d have bought that Cherry Blossom bag, and kept it in great condition- you could probably sell it today for about what you paid- or more!), it’s environmentally friendly :), and you’re no poser!

Hey, Lynn. Let us know if you’re in the market. Promise us that you’ll never carry that ridiculous bag above again, and we’ll give you free shipping on any of our beautiful, authentic pre-owned luxury bags!

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Tags: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Canal Street, counterfeit, fake, Louis Vuitton, Lynn Yaeger, Murakami, the Village Voice

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 4:03 am and is filed under Village Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.