Spot the Fashion Victim(s): The Global Demand for Consuming Counterfeit Fashion

• In Event: Deviant Leisure: Demand, Desire and the Harmful Marketplace

Abstract

Counterfeiting is rapidly evolving as one of the world’s largest illicit markets and in recent years has commanded more attention from criminologists, most notably for its relationship with organised crime. Thus, whilst it is useful for criminologists to consider the supply of counterfeit goods, the sustainability of illegal markets, is inherently reliant on the consumption of both licit and illicit products meaning that criminologists must also consider demand. This paper, drawing on original qualitative data with consumers of counterfeit fashion goods uses fashion, a form of ‘non-safety critical’ counterfeiting to critically explore the demand for counterfeit fashion. Due to the huge market for counterfeit goods, this paper suggests the first assumption which needs to be abandoned is the idea that non-deceptive counterfeit consumption can be typified demographically or as deviant. At the same time, considering the illicit market of counterfeits in absence of a broader understanding of consumption and parallel legal markets is unhelpful. This, I argue, constrains notions of harm and victimisation within limited pre-existing conceptions about crime and fails to critically consider the harms which are perpetuated by the legitimate industry, and further, fails to contextualise how harm is embedded within the political economy of consumer capitalism.

Author

• Joanna Large, Teesside University