Chinese Manufacturers Expose Luxury Fashion In Response To The Tarrifs?

The implementation of Trump's tarrifs against China has led to a media troll campaign of Chinese influencers and manufacturers exposing luxury brands on how and where they are made.

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In recent days, on TikTok, a series of videos published by Chinese factory owners and suppliers of bags and beauty products have flooded the feeds of millions of users, especially Americans. Essentially, they all claim that almost all European luxury is secretly Made in China. The most widely shared video is by a certain @bagbestie1, a Chinese man who appears to speak as the owner of an unidentified factory and claims to have been supplying a huge number of European luxury brands for thirty years. The official account of this individual, still visible in reposted videos circulating widely on Twitter and TikTok over the weekend, is no longer available, but there is an identical second account called @senbags2 in which the man talks extensively about the operation of Chinese factories, claiming both that his factory produces bags for luxury brands that are then sent to Europe and finished with the “Made in Italy” label, and openly promoting dupes of Hermès bags, including one video—widely circulated in the U.S.—that even lists the costs and materials used to make a Birkin.

Other videos by @uilsonquirino4 show a pile of Louis Vuitton and Gucci sneakers that actually appear to be fake and seem to be sold for a fraction of the original price through unspecified channels, while another video advertises exact replicas of Birkenstock. There are also guided tour videos of an industry trade fair for luxury leather suppliers, the Expo Drive Wanchai in Hong Kong, and a woman who claims to produce beauty products for the top brands on the market. But what does this flood of videos mean? And are the revelations they contain true? It’s important to make some distinctions: the first individual we mentioned, for example, claims to produce bags for many luxury brands and to be able to recreate a Hermès Birkin for just under $1,400—but he is essentially selling a very refined dupe; the same goes for the manufacturer selling Boston Clogs by Birkenstock for ten dollars. In fact, both Hermès bags and Birkenstocks are manufactured in Europe in French and German factories respectively, and their supply chains are fairly well documented.

We have no way of verifying whether what is being said in these videos by such different individuals is true—it is certain that the videos were filmed in what appears to be a real factory. According to various social media users, “the Chinese government has removed the confidentiality clause that luxury brands had with Chinese manufacturers and now the producers are exposing your favorite ‘luxury’ brands and letting everyone know that it all comes from them,” as many posts claim, even though there is no evidence of any official announcement of the removal of such a confidentiality clause. And many of these videos seem aimed specifically at the American market, suggesting—according to widespread opinion online—that this wave of revealing content is an indirect response from China to the ongoing trade war with the USA, with its producers beginning to openly expose the hidden mechanisms of a mysterious supply chain. Accounts like @lunasourcingchina feature the owner, a woman known only as Luna, exploring various factories and trade fairs, revealing that in essence, 80% of many bags and accessories—as well as cosmetics and even knitwear—are produced in China and finished in Europe where the logo is applied. The videos end with an invitation to contact her for direct sale of these ambiguously authentic products.

It’s impossible to doubt the nationalistic nature of these videos: the title of one of LunaSourcing’s most viewed videos, with 2.9 million views, is literally “Name one thing that China CANNOT make,” while the bag manufacturer mentioned earlier doesn’t seem interested in discrediting luxury brands so much as in highlighting the extremely high levels of quality that can be achieved in Chinese factories.

#fashion #luxuryfashion #fashionnews #trumptariffs #chinesefashion #tarrifs