At the beginning, I thought integrity was enough. Not the corporate kind that comes printed in mission statements, but the quieter conviction that if you make something with care and conviction, people will feel it. That belief sustained me through years of obsessing over edge paint, leather weight, and the geometry of seams. But in the world of luxury, sincerity is invisible unless it is wrapped in spectacle.

When I co-founded A TAKE ON FAKE with Coco, we were driven by a shared hunger to make things that mattered. We weren’t trying to mimic the language of fashion houses. We were looking for something real—a style shaped not by celebrity endorsements or runway flash, but by intention. We sourced everything ourselves. We cut, stitched, and boxed our work with pride. But what we quickly discovered is that the fashion world doesn’t reward honesty. It rewards mythology.

Before TANNER LEATHERSTEIN turned the internet into a classroom on leather, peeling apart overpriced bags and exposing the truth beneath them, I had already begun to suspect the rules weren’t what they seemed. While he cut through logos with a scalpel, I was navigating silence. We weren’t ridiculed—we were simply overlooked.

By 2007, we had to make a decision. The infrastructure we needed no longer existed locally. We moved our production to GUANGZHOU, where the technical precision was extraordinary. Yet as we tried to bring our designs to life, we encountered a chilling form of efficiency. The question wasn’t “What do you want to create?” It was “Which brand do you want to imitate?” They showed us lookbooks from CELINE and BALENCIAGA, offering to mirror them with uncanny accuracy. Creativity was treated as a deviation from standard procedure. Innovation was a luxury no one had time for.

It wasn’t malice. It was survival. In their world, originality wasn’t valued because customers weren’t asking for it. They wanted familiarity. They wanted security. They wanted the illusion that had already been sold to them a thousand times before.

The Brand That Couldn’t Speak the Language

The lesson hit me slowly. I realized that we hadn’t built a brand so much as we had built an object—and in luxury, the object is never the point. Prestige is built on the perception of exclusivity, on the stories told in private clubs and glossy spreads. Without a recognizable name, our bags were mute. In a marketplace that thrives on semiotics, we were invisible.

The institutions that control the idea of luxury do not trade in craftsmanship. They trade in desire. LVMH, RICHEMONT, and KERING don’t sell bags. They sell codes. And those codes are delivered through a system that is impermeable to those who lack social capital, media clout, and curated mystique. You can be talented. You can be original. But if you are not chosen, you do not exist.

The Code Hidden in the Price

There was a time when I thought a price tag reflected effort and expertise. I believed that the high numbers on designer labels were somehow tied to a higher moral ground. Eventually, I saw the truth. What you are paying for is not the stitching, nor the quality of the leather. You are paying for what the object means to other people. Luxury is a message. It signals that you belong. That you know. That you have access.

Barthes was right when he said that objects carry language. That language has been commodified and weaponized in fashion. A CHANEL isn’t just a purse. It’s a sentence. It says something before you speak. And when an object becomes that powerful, it no longer needs to be functional or fair. It just needs to be recognized.

The Workshop That Didn’t Follow the Rules

I thought I was done until I met Kiko in SHENZHEN. He wasn’t interested in the fashion calendar or influencer trends. He was focused on form, durability, and beauty. His workshop was modest, but his work was stunning. With him, I found a space to rebuild A TAKE ON FAKE—not as a challenger brand, but as something new entirely.

We stepped into the grey zone. We embraced the underworld of high-quality replicas, not to deceive, but to reimagine. We weren’t producing fakes. We were producing pieces with real integrity, modeled on excellence, made accessible. We had no advertising budget, no influencer pipeline. Just craftsmanship and word-of-mouth. For a certain kind of customer, that was more than enough.

A Shenzhen leather artisan at work bridging the gap between replica and real.

Why the Truth Struggles to Sell

TANNER LEATHERSTEIN’s project is brave. He names the unspoken rules. He takes apart the armor of brands and shows people what’s underneath. But even he is swimming upstream. The truth about luxury doesn’t always land. In fact, many prefer not to hear it. There is comfort in the illusion, and the system counts on that.

Without the right connections, even the most skilled hands remain hidden. In luxury, visibility is manufactured. Permission is not earned—it is granted. And without that blessing, no amount of talent can carry your name forward.

Still Making, Still Believing

We’re still here. Not on the runway. Not in museum pop-ups. But in the quiet corners where real design survives. A TAKE ON FAKE hasn’t vanished. We’ve evolved. We create for the few who care enough to look deeper. We keep our standards high, even if the spotlight never finds us.

There is no promise of fame in this path. No guarantees of recognition. But the work matters. The act of making still holds power. And perhaps, in time, the story will shift. Maybe one day luxury will be defined not by who speaks the loudest, but by who speaks the truest.

Until then, we keep our heads down and our tools sharp.