Spotting LV fakes - 100 metres away!

Today at the office, my heart almost stopped.

Wow! I thought, there's actually someone with great taste and a fat enough wallet to fork out the $2K plus for a 2007 A/W LV Mirage Speedy in burgundy! Lucky girl!

Just so you know, this bag, I have been drooling over ever since I first saw it, but unfortunately, it was already sold out by the time I actually seriously considered to buy it.

So of course my heart stopped and saliva dripped, until I noticed that something wasn't quite right about that bag. Nonchanlantly I strolled over again to get up close and personal with it. In my heart and mind, I was doing all the mental check offs...

LV monogram logo? Check

One piece of canvas? Check

Burgandy? Check

Mirage printed canvas? Hmm... dubious, where's the gradient?

Exotic leather trim? WAIT! Exotic leather trim?!!

Instantly, I was rummaging through my mind and trying to retrieve that information stored in some deep recess of my slow pea brain. "Something is wrong, " my heart and mind screams. The red trim, it's too red, isn't it? ISN'T IT?!

What on earth did Andrea and Wai (my favourite SAs) say at the LV boutique? Something like only the Griet and Delft has the exotic leather version? Something like that?!!!

So I came back home to do all sort of possible searches on the local search engine. True enough, I can't seem to find any reference to the Mirage Speedy in exotic leather. Other than those claiming to sell AAA replicas, which in my opinion are absolutely so C grade, I wonder how anyone can fall for them.

Needless to say, I am gratified. Thank God I do my homework!

The moral of the story? Please don't get a fake! Even a novice like me can tell that its not the real thing. Trust me, rather than getting an expensive fake Mirage Speedy which the experts and not so experts can tell miles away, invest a little more and get a trusty Neverfull PM or a Speedy 25 in the signature LV monogram and be content! Afterall, no one is going to judge you unless its a bloody bad fake! That simply screams tasteless!

Here are the pics of the real and the fake... Kudos if you can tell which is the real thing.

Did you see it? The one on top is the real deal... Picture taken from http://louisvuittonlover.blogspot.com/2007/09/speedy-mirage-bordeaux.html