I Think Your Louis Vuitton is Fake

Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk, but if I see you carrying a monogrammed Louis Vuitton bag, unless you are Kanye West, I’m just going to assume it’s fake. I will, however, feel bad about it afterwards, because I’ll be left wondering whether you maybe lived off ramen for three months to afford it.

And telling is really hard. Louis Vuitton representatives say, “When it comes to authentication the only way to know for sure is to know where it is made. We do not put anything identifiable in our bags that highly skilled counterfeiters haven’t been able to duplicate.”

However, those kind of counterfeiters are in a minority. There are a few things that inept counterfeiters do that you won’t see on a real Louis Vuitton bag. Check the authenticity with these handy tips:

1)      Upside Down LVs: This is actually a very easy way to check – many Louis Vuitton bags have upside down LVs on one side. That’s because Louis Vuitton uses the same piece of leather and it wraps all the way around.  Most fakes are going to have the LVs right side up all the way around.

2)      Check the Stitches: Stitching on a real Louis Vuitton bag will be even throughout. And you’re going to find the same number of stitches on say, any given handle. Admittedly, you might have to get really close to someone to tell whether or not that’s the case, but if the stitches on the base of the handle are noticeably uneven, or if there are more stitched on one side than the other, then that bag is definitely fake.

3)      The Monogram: The monograms have been the same for the past 200 years. They’re going to line up evenly across the bag, and the handle is going to fall across the same signet in approximately the same place. Though frankly, if you have a counterfeit bag that has lopsided LVs, I really think you should have spent $10 more and bought it from the counterfeiter down the street.

4)      Any plastic wrap or bubble wrap around the handle. Or, for that matter, traces thereof. Most Louis Vuitton bags are made with very soft leather handles that are not wrapped in anything, so, yes, if a shady man on Canal Street is swinging a bag back and forth by its bubble wrapped handle, it is fake. Likewise, if the bag appears to have little shreds of plastic caught where its owner ripped off said bubble wrap.

5)      Check the Font: Particularly the Os. They will be very round on a Louis Vuitton bag, and often more oval on fakes.

6)      If there is a tag on the bag, it is a bag full of lies: A tag will never, ever be directly attached to a Louis Vuitton Bag. Fun fact: a real Louis Vuitton bag will contain two tags, one of which lists the model number, the other will say what the bag is made of.