Knock-Off Goodies Becoming More Popular

As the price of gas- and, really, the price of everything- goes up, the money left over for luxury accessories is evaporating. Just because the money isn't there, though, doesn't mean that the human desire for status symbols has similarly disappeared. Instead, entrepreneurs are capitalizing on those who covet the illustrious goods by offering inexpensive, highly functional but legally questionable alternatives.

They're known as replicas, knock-offs, look-alikes, bootlegs and a plethora of other terms. What they really are, though, is counterfeit. As desktop technology races ahead, the ability of an enterprising person to create an amazingly realistic copy of pretty much any item edges closer and closer to perfection. The term "counterfeit" may have been traditionally associated with money and horribly overstated Rolex watches, but modern replicating techniques have spread the practice to produce knock-off watches, sunglasses, purses, wallets, shirts, suits, belts, suitcases and nearly anything else imaginable. Basically, if it has a popular brand name, it probably has a counterfeit equivalent somewhere in the world.

There are strong arguments both for and against the use of replicas. Their growing ubiquity is a clear indication that consumers have little resistance to getting a thousand-dollar watch, for example, for fifty bucks from the Internet... or for a little less from the seedy looking guy on the corner. For many in the middle-class, the luxury of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on an incidental accessory just isn't within reach anymore. By offering a striking visual appearance and roughly the same quality of items available in the neighborhood Wal*Mart, replicas are an easily affordable way to impressively accessorize on a budget.