The Hidden Hierarchy of Counterfeit Fashion

Written by Principal Investigator Dr. Tommy Tse

Quick disclaimer: This post is not promoting counterfeits. It’s an academic take on them as a cultural and material phenomenon.

In my recent research, I’ve become fascinated with the everyday materiality of fashion—especially how the Global South disrupts Western ideas of originality and authenticity. One such disruption? The massive global appetite for Chinese counterfeit fashion, including in Africa.

Why do people across class lines choose knockoffs? And what does that say about what we value—creativity, originality, or simply good design and decent quality? While scholars have shown that Southern consumers care more about local prestige and reliability than Western IPR standards, I’ve found that a symbolic hierarchy still lingers: Western “authentic” goods remain aspirational, while their copies are seen as forever second-best.

Over the past months, I’ve visited both luxury flagships and underground markets in China, interviewed brokers in Guangzhou and Shanghai, dug through RED, Douyin, and WeChat, and compared the real and fake by touch, smell, and eye. There’s a whole taxonomy:

From Mass market products (市场货) to Original Order (原单货), Top Original Order (顶级原单货), Special Grade (特级), Channel Gāofǎng (渠道版高仿), all the way to the elusive “Ceiling Gāofǎng” (天花板高仿)—using recycled luxury materials and crafted by ex-Louis Vuitton and Chanel workers in Dongguan. Apparently, even the LV microchips are faked—with updated serials and all.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: If a replica can surpass the original in quality, what even is authenticity anymore? And is gāofǎng fashion, in some strange way, emancipatory?