fake_fashion_agency: Aesthetical making and vestimentary tactics between geniuses, creativity and Shanzhai

Abstract

In order to create a forgery, one has to know and understand the object in question. Iconic stylistic details become replicated – with a view of passing, of convincing others that it is the real thing. In fashion, only through revealing a nuance of a logo, the fabric, or stitching does it become clear that a forgery is taking place. A moment of slippage is required to expose the joke of the trickster, the player and the impostor. In turn, the certain identity, the specific understanding of originality is stolen. This article will discuss a fake fashion phenomenon that clearly exhibits strategies and disguised tactics. Does faking enable people to create their own relationship to things and to others, and how this could be seen as an ability of self-empowering acting? Based on the fashion-theoretical concept of fashion-agency as a self-empowering understanding enabled through, a capture of, and an acting with fashion, case studies from the globally effective fashion system and reference to the Chinese concept of Shanzhai will set the area for further study. With reference to the seizure of fake sneakers by German customs officers, Diesel’s ‘Deisel’ pop-up store, Super Deluxe and Adidas, these recent case study examples will be cultural-critical introduced as well as an aesthetical and vestimentary practice of productive counterfeiting tactics will be considered. These first cultural-scientific explorations of the phenomenon, which marks the beginning of a research project on fake fashion, was flanked by a DIY fake workshop for children aged 8–11, which was held in May 2018 in Hamburg, Germany. Its short depiction will demonstrate how enlightened it is to engage people, especially children, with creating clothes on their own, and how stimulating the thereby raised questions can be for further research. Of course, it has always been possible to sew on three stripes on an object itself in order to imitate Adidas; but when the fake that is so good to be seemingly original is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and acceptable, it diminishes the desirability and prestige of the authentic in the global mountain village. And this could be a chance for real clothes instead of appearances of fashion.