Thursday, September 06, 2007

A compendium of excellent counterfeits

Radar Magazine offers this extensive roundup of counterfeit luxury goods -- mostly from China, natch. Everything from a Ferrari 330 P4, high-end Italian wines, irreplaceable paintings, a couple of deadly weapons, and the Rolex. Missing, my favorite knockoff of all time, once spotted in Santee Alley but not purchased: a "Channel" belt. Hote kewtewr! Link. (thanks David)

Update: Vann Hall says,

FYI, the splash image of the dead alligator Lacoste logo appears to be of a knock-off of a knock-off: Mad Dog Productions' "Croc O' Shirt." This was soon followed by their "Horse Shirt," which parodied the Ralph Lauren/Polo logo by depicting a polo player, his heel caught in a stirrup, being dragged behind his mount.

MDP put out a number of other novelty products, including Silent Vigil Foam Rubber Wind Chimes and Earl the Dead Cat: Link.

[Back then, MDP was based in Richmond, Virginia, where Mad Dog (Barry Gottlieb) went on to promote several more-or-less new wave-y acts (Suzy Saxon and the Anglos and Single Bullet Theory, if memory serves) -- which is how I first became acquainted with him. The last I heard (around the end of the last century, probably), MDP had relocated to San Francisco.]

Berimbauone adds,
As a follow-up to your "compendium of ecellent counterfits", this article in Popular Science referenced in my blog talks about China's cloning industry. It's not just shoes, bags and jeans anymore. Now they can copy anything from an iPod, a Ford or Mercedes Benz auto, to the actual manufacturing plants off of the original blueprints. Check out this gallery of a cloned Ford, Mercedes Benz, PSP, and Adidas.