I wasn't "plugging" anything, just offering the ignored a few basic steps they can take to begin to educate themselves. You know as well as I do that when it comes to all the crummy Guangzhou fakes sprouting up on Ebay like colon polyps, it's an incredibly low bar.
I maintain that if you want to recognize the real thing, there's simply no substitute for repeated exposure to the real thing. And anyone who knows the first thing about the brand knows Malleries and L'Ecrin are reputable sites with a wide variety of authentic products, end of story. Where else should people go to develop a discriminating eye? Telling people to observe the bags in celebrity/socialite snaps would be disastrous because they'd be getting an eyeful of O*** and U**** B**** fakes all day long. And don't even get me started on Ebay. (Hint: it's not just the 0-feedback Asian sellers you should be watching out for.)
My "familiarity with authentic items" stems from my experience as a gold-leaf bookbinding artisan who was hired by a high-end Hong Kong handbag boutique to hand-tool/render monograms in my Manhattan home studio. Quite an expensive service, but his clients thought I was worth it. I've seen it ALL: authentic, good fake, bad fake, and in-between. I wasn't offering authentication advice, but if anyone feels like testing me--leather, stitching, thread quality, stamping, you name it-- I'd be delighted to take it up in a PM or another thread.
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