Pearl of Wisdom x Fool's Gold: A Pair of Fake Chanel Earrings

Guys, I totes read an academic paper and I think you'll be interested in what it's about.

"Omg, what is this, what sane person actually reads academic papers?!" We're called students.

I get forced into reading a lot of marketing papers for my course, and they are very tedious most of the time, but sometimes they are absolute gold. I swear 90% of a marketing degree is consumer tips, backed up by great research.

This study* is an example of some knowledge that is actually very useful to have up your sleeve. It basically provides solid evidence that people will treat you better if you're wearing a luxury brand logo.

"A person who displays a luxury-brand label, not an ordinary label, is indeed perceived as wealthier and receives higher status ratings than a person who does not display a label, as predicted by notions of conspicuous consumption." *

Conspicuous consumption means that a good or service is used by you in front of an 'audience'. Like, lots of people are going to see you driving your car, but a lot less people will see you using your shampoo. We tend to focus more on the things we consume in public, because of associations and branding and all that stuff.

Note the blu tack in the reflection...

I'm a huge fan of psychology and I love employing little Life Tricks. For example, the more you show your palms, the most trustworthy you're perceived as being (fun fact). But I don't have any luxury brand items, unless you count a pretty sweet colour screen Casio calculator or a Samsung Galaxy from three generations ago. Oh, I have prescription Ray Ban glasses, but I think they're pretty embarrassing these days. Thanks, hipsters.

Enter Aliexpress.

Designer knock offs are super common, I don't need to tell you that. I've seen more fake Louis Vuitton wallets than wallets of any other sort. It's very frowned upon to buy fake, because that's kinda a sign that you're trying too hard and being fake yourself. However, we don't really feel the same way about dupes from less expensive brands or dupes that don't have a logo on them. I have a fake Lazy Oaf shirt and a lot of the stuff I own is 'inspired' by designer brands via trickle-down trends or plain ol' copying.

I guess the difference is aesthetics vs brand equity (value). I have a pair or three of fake Mise En Dior earrings, that I bought before J-Law and Rihanna started wearing the real things and alerting me to Dior's originals. I bought them for sheer aesthetic reasons. Most of Dior's earrings are, to be honest, kinda awful, but seem pretty because they have the brand name attached to them. Buying a fake pair of this variety would be for brand equity reasons and that's a little shady.


HOWEVER, I'm all for shady, in small doses! I've already ordered myself a pair of fake Chanel earrings (hopefully more convincing than my DIY ones, pictured above), and I intend to use them for practical reasons. The study found that wearing luxury brands helps in job interviews and collected donations, and other cases. It's a very small investment for some pretty great benefits.

"Seven laboratory and field experiments supported the prediction that people treat a person who displays a luxury brand more favourably than a person who does not or, more accurately, than the same person when he or she wears identical clothing without a brand label." *

Sure, the paper does make it clear that the reason luxury brands make people seem higher status is because they seem like they have more wealth, which is totally offset by having a fake pair of earrings. But who is really going to ask "Are those real?" And if some punk does ask you that, I give you permission to lie.

I'm recommending that everyone should have a convincing, logo emblazoned, piece of fake designer wear, to pull out when you feel like you might need a bit of a boost. Earrings are really great, because they're usually just logos and they're small enough to not be noticeably fake. Also, I think a pair of Chanel, etc, earrings is something a lot of girls would have, even if the rest of their outfit was from Glassons or TopShop. It's something a wealthy grandmother would pass down, or a special birthday present from some very nice parents.

Below, you shall find a wonderful collection of the best fake earrings I found. Bar the ones I made, of course. I went for ones that were very simple and looked expensive, because they're more convincing. If you want to search for more over on Aliexpress or eBay, searching with the brand name won't get you far. Use "brand earrings" or "logo earrings", and scroll through some pages.





*Nelissen, Rob and Marijn HC Meijers (2011), "Social Benefits of Luxury Brands as Costly Signals of Wealth and Status," Evolution and Human Behavior, 32 (5), 343-55.


Further Quotes from Nelissen & Marijn, 2010:

"Participants in the brand-label condition found the applicant more suitable for the job... and also suggested he should earn more than the applicant in the no-label condition."

"Participants in the brand-label condition complied with the request on 52.2% of the occasions, compared to 13.6% in the no-label condition."

"Average donations were higher in the brand-label condition than in the no-label condition."

"Transfers in the luxury-label condition exceeded those in the ordinary-label condition."

Fun .gif Google made for me...