inexpensive louis vuitton channel Buying Louis Vui

nikea339

Clearly, the easiest way to do this would be to walk into the nearest Louis Vuitton store, point to said item, whip out your credit card and try not to cry when you get your bill the emulating month.
But what happens if you don't live near a store? Or you (or your girlfriend, or your mom, or someone you have to love so very much to even think about buying one of these things) want to buy something that was a limited edition item? Then, my friends, here is a navigate to sailing this murky world.
Please note that some of this message following may be wrong. I am no specialist in every type of bag out there, but this writeup comes directly from spending the last half a year trying to find one of these goddamn bags for a loved one. May God help me. Six months ago, I was innocent. No longer. I have been stained.
Brief Introduction
Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey is a brand name that has world broad recognition for their high class items that they sell, particularly bags (at least under the LVMH name. Their wines are pretty well known independently). They have stores all around the world, either neutral or in very choose division stores. They rank surrounded the most appreciated among a healthy bag industry led by the big houses such as Chanel, Fendi, Celine.
If you should admire a bag you see from a journal or on exhibit, do be arranged to shell out at least half a grand. The only things that they sell under the $500 mark are typically the wallets,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], coin purses, planners - that arrange of thing.
Places to Buy
Official Online Stores
Louis Vuitton has its own webpage, but it does not deal directly in the sale of their own bags online. Their lawful appointed e-tailer is currently Eluxury.com, and this store stocks a very limited digit of LV items, that the standard Monogram series (those hideous brown bags with the LV logo plastered bring an end to ...it like a bad ad). If your loved one wants one of the standard bags or you really don't want to think too much about it, this website is the way to go. You won't ever get a fake bag from Eluxury (and be pleased of that, these prices are murder). However, Eluxury will only sell items that are instantly available. If you want a new bag that has a very long waiting list, then you will must try the retinue ways.
If you are a low bastard and want to save a couple of bucks, then possibly Ebay might net you better deals. (Note: this only applies to the Monogram, and possibly the Epi series. All other series will most likely be cheaper via Eluxury. Honest.)
Consignment Stores
If you have the option of getting it from consignment stores (i.e., if you live in New York City or Los Angeles where women shed bags like fur so they can keep up their shopping drug habit), then this might be the best way to go aside from going to a LV store. If the store is credible, then the bag has been pretty much authenticated for you.
The additional major dividend of going to consignment stores is you get to put your paws bring an end to ...said item. The easiest way to identify the bags are by smelling and sensibility it.
The drawback to this route is if you know very little and/or are a human who finds that entire industry distasteful. Then you will find it very distracting to examine mentioned bag while a cooing lady peers over your shoulder saying how you/your girlfriend will just adore it, and its price is ever so reasonable. Yeah right, lady, only in comparison to the rest of the mart, and not, oh, I don't know, in reality.
Online
The other street to getting your hands on a bag is either through consignment stores and/or auction sites, Ebay being the most popular. However, getting your hands on an authentic piece will be the necrosis of you; before you buy a real bag, you will have spent days, possibly weeks (or months, in some cases), rifling through webpage after webpage of fakes.
The simplest way to find real items on Ebay is probably to price rank your quest and elect and prefer through the most expensive items. This will hurt, as these ever so kind sellers have prices two or 3 or even quadruple the retail merit. If you are sale starving, then persistence is a morality, my friend.
Louis Vuitton Store
Aside from online auctions, this is really the only other way to get your hands on new items with long waiting lists. You go up to lady, ask for said item and coincide to be on the waiting list. I believe you pay in advance, (though I'm not sure about this).
This is possibly the most mind-boggingly bitter way to get a bag, because a) you not only lost a colossal chunk of change, but b) you don't have anything to show for it when you walk out of said store.
Trademarks of Louis Vuitton Bags (read: Doing Your Homework)
Zippers
Remember to test every zipper. Fake bags have incredibly crappy zippers that are tough to open and near, and this is probably the easiest test to do, even for a complete newbie.
The real bags always have very good zippers. Get your hands on a bag and try it out; a real bag will have zippers that open and close very smoothly. I believe there is only one major zipper enterprise in the world: 'YKK', which is short for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Yoshida Manufacturing Corporation). I believe they are the largest zipper enterprise in the world, and chances are 99% that every zipper you come across will be manufactured by them. Louis Vuitton is no exception; they use YKK zippers, one of the higher grade zips. If you find the bag's zipper snags or you find it difficult to open and close, chances are pretty good that it's a fake.
Note: Though all the zippers I've ever seen in person had the LV logo and there was no sign of the YKK logo, I've heard that it is possible to have LV zippers with a YKK logo below. Not sure on this matter. Your mileage may vary.
Pattern
There's a whole cluster of nonsense on the web about LV logos being upside down because it's made from one piece, and that if the logos face up on either sides, it's fake, etc, so on and so ahead. Truth is, they do it both ways: the logo can either show up upside-down or rightside-up, it just depends on the bag in question.
The best clue to knowing what is real and what is fake is to go to the Louis Vuitton website, or buy a classify, and get pictures of the item you want to buy in question. Pay attention to the placement of the logos and the charms on all sides of the bag; every single Louis Vuitton bag of this particular style/size will look like that. Go look at the item that you want to buy in question.
This is the quickest way to diagram out what's fake and what's not. Fake bags tend to be very needy by creature accurate about the placement of the logos/charms on the bag and will dart them willy nilly bring ... to an endthe bag in some randomized placement better suited for Winamp. The acute and perceiving customer will not be cheated. If it's not placement of charms, it's the size of the charms. You can rule out half the items on Ebay single by the fact that the logos on the bags are too big/too small (too big is more likely than too small, incidentally). If it's nor, then it's the color.
Either way, as long as you've got pictures of the real thing, there is very little you can work erroneous with.
Note: This is not the case for all the bags, but a couple of Louis Vuitton bags have changed their outward over the years for of the quantity of fakes. The Monogram Ellipse, for instance, has changed the mow of the leather on the bags, so the monograms line up a little differently, relying on the bag. The lesson of this: cost a week or two act a lot of research.
Hardware
Louis Vuitton bags have a lot of metal parts to it: locks, keys, studs, screws, turns, etc. Typically these are a lustrous brass color, with the LV logo ticketed above them. Some human think that they're all made of brass, but apparently this isn't the case. If you know what you're looking for (penetrate above for having photos of the real thing), this is likewise another cozy path to blot counterfeits.
Things to look for:
Color. The color and reflective hue of the hardware - easiest to spot with locks and keys - are a giveaway.
Size. In the case of the studs, pay attention to their size. Sometimes the only huge giveaway of a fake is the fact that that the studs are also big or also small. This is especially a good thing to spot with bags like the Papillon, Pochette, etc.
Screws. If you can get photos of the bag you want to buy, see if you can get pictures of the screws. Louis Vuitton seems to use their own distinctive type of screw, a screw that seems to be fashioned vaguely like a bloom. This is by far the hardest thing a bag can emulate; chances are very little they can follow this.
Corners. In the cases of wallets like the Porte Tresors and such, pay attention to the corner hardware. The real items may be bent; the fake ones may be rectangular. Pretending to be Sherlock Holmes and paying attention to every detail goes a long way.
Date Codes
Most Louis Vuitton bags have date codes. These are 6 alphanumeric characters printed elsewhere on the bag and is a afflict in the ass to find (some of them are printed very close to stitching, and in some cases, you have to pluck out the stitching to find it). This basically is a signal of when the bag was produced, not any weigh of authenticity; if you should bring an LV bag behind to a store to have it repaired and they replace the leather that had the aboriginal date code, you'll simply be issued another date code.
Way too many people get caught up on this date code issue, since many people think that it's the only clue to authenticity. Don't be fooled.
Note: Not all bags have date codes. Older bags don't, for instance. Also, not on the net really seems to know how to decipher appointment codes; I'm sure there is some mathematical way to decode the mathematics and a programmer with some free time could write a agenda, but it won't be me.
Leather
Leather on real bags have a definite feel and "give" - they are malleable without being soft as suede, and tight enough so that they keep the shape of the bag. The special thing about the leather from LV is that it is ridged ever so slightly, and covered with a delicate sheen. The sheen comes from LV's special mysterious sauce; nobody knows what exactly it is (and LV isn't effective),[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but it gives the leather a certain hue and shine that shows itself very well in photographs, and this is emphasized by the ridged, bumpy surface. Identifying fake from true bags from touch is best left to people who mustuched and handled real bags before. Incidentally, that sauce does nothing to defend the bag. At least as far as I can differentiate.
LV bags have a pleasing leather smell, nothing out of mediocre. What is out of mediocre is the fact that the leather is untreated; definition that, over time, the leather will age and darken into a honey golden color. It's apparently a trait that LV bags are famous for. New bags tend to have a pale hue to them; older bags pick up a darker patina, unless they've been stored inside a closet hardly evermething. Unless you rarely use the bag, the patina does not age evenly; at the end of the day, in cumbersome responsibility use, you'd be carrying it around in rain and sun and the entire bag doesn't get equal share of damage. Also,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], because the bag leather is untreated, water dyes will not bring an end to .... Meaning that these bags aren't meant for the rain, if you catch my drift.
Interesting note: some of the hardcore followers will do anything to make sure their bags get that famous honey color that LV bags are famous for. Apparently they'll store the object in answer away for a year in a cabinet so that all sides old evenly, and then spend another year putting it by a windowsill and rotating it so that the entire bag ages evenly. Talk about lunatic.
Good Things to Know
There are no such thing for wholesale deals. If they demand they are wholesalers or that they got the bag from wholesalers, reside away from them. The bags are fake. The end.
Louis Vuitton will authenticate your bag. Buy an item but not sure if it's real? Go to the nearest store and get it authenticated for free. Make sure you get the manager to authenticate it for you; the client service staff may not have enough experience to be able to distinguish real from fake, but the manager typically is supposed to.
There are a few caveats to this. If you bring several bags from the same seller and they're all fake, then you are pretty much required to hand over the name of the seller, as Louis Vuitton will prosecute sellers. This may or may not contain you getting your bags confiscated (probably not, but you never know). You, in full perception, will also not be able to sell these items back to the public at the hazard of crashing the law. Isn't it lovely?
The other caveat is that there is a small chance of being publicly humiliated with a fake bag. Some people think "better secure than sorry", but hey, you've got your own pride too.
The last caveat is that even if they authenticate it for you, they won't provide a letter of authenticity. This is not such a big deal unless you are intending to sell the bag in the future. This knots hand in hand with:
Bags that come with letters of authenticity are fake. Apparently, once upon a time, a long time ago, LV used to offer letters for those worried, but people abused this system and invested letters when selling fake bags. So LV stopped issuing letters.
If you need authentication and you don't live close a Louis Vuitton, there are a couple of folk online who live, exhale, love to the bottom of their hearts everything LV. Poupette from mypoupette.com is one of them; if you need a letter, she can lightly publish one (notarized and everything), provided you have the money.
Prices are not standardized. LV bags do not have standardized prices across the earth, due to fluctuating money and market bearing. This means that prices will alter slightly from store to store, zone to region, nation to country. That simply means that you honestly don't really know how much a bag is worth for any given bag. You will be accurate only up to a certain degree.
On the shine side, prices for any given bag (with the exception of the Monogram line) not go down, provided the condition of the bag is still peerless. It's virtually as good as gold.
Louis Vuitton can repair bags. Saw a real bag in a consignment store/auction that was a little scruffy? Got a lot of time and/or patience? You apparently can bring it in to a Louis Vuitton store and get it repaired - they'll replace leather, hardware, you name it. If you get your hands on a filth cheap item, repairing it might be cheaper than picking up a new one (note: in all probity, though, you'll probably pay the same in the long run).
However, Louis Vuitton charges a hefty fare for this. I'm not sure if they have a standardized price list, but fix of any given bag will cost a pretty cent, depending on what needs to be fixed, prices usually starting from $30 and up. This also takes a lot of time, as they must mail the bag back to the plant that it was made from to have it repaired. Expect to await many weeks or even months.
This adoption may alternatively may no be obtainable if you the item you own is quit; I wouldn't assure it, whereas, since some of the abandoned items have special leather namely I doubt Louis Vuitton keeps approximately for the perdition of it.
Navigating the Internet
This partition is only for those who need to get a bag online, either through auction sites or a website and can't get it from Eluxury. This will be a fairly terse partition and can pretty much apply to all auctions in general.
Know what you ambition to buy. That means doing above research. Especially when knowing what the bag ought cost; confidence me, it won't be many lower than that amount. Getting scammed not only sucks, but is expensive; if a fake bag sells for half the price of the real thing, and the real bag is $1000, losing $500 well, gee, hurts.
Feedback means nothing. Lots of sellers have lots of feedback saying "A+ SELLER!!!!! Will buy again!!!!!!!". It isn't that hard to mail off a few CDs and gewgaws to rack up good feedback ratings. Whether or not said sellers know anything about the item they're selling is another thing entirely. Not to advert there are some people banking on their good feedback to bulldoze their way through a sale of a bag they know perfectly well is fake.
Feedback is just a start. Read the feedback, especially if the seller sells a lot of big ticket items, particularly bags. You'll commonly see more feedback by the lines of "Went to LV store and it was authentic, I love you" kind of things, if they're credible. If feedback is kept personal, don't disturb.
It can't really be said to be the same if the auction is private. A lot of good sellers will keep auctions private so that bidders' identities are secluded (apparently there are a lot of scammers who will hit the bidders with offers that look favor second contingency offers and such).
Do the usual thing: send email, ask for more photos of said item, read feedback. What you should do if you're buying anything online, really.
Seriously consider about escrow. It's valuable, and it's time-consuming, but that's all the protection you've actually got. Ebay and Paypal are probably the maximum unhelpful monstrosities you'll ever encounter, primarily with items value extra than $250. Your only real line of defense is the United States Postal Service later you obtain scammed, and I wouldn't even understand what you could do if the seller is not from the United States.
Escrow gives you the option to get the item in question and get it authenticated first (if you set up the contract that way).
Avoid Bidpay. Best thing about Paypal is its chargeback option if you pay by credit card. Bidpay doesn't even have that protection. It's very popular with abroad scammers. Keep that in mind.
Getting Scammed
If you are scammed, there's not many you can do. Ebay's assurance is abysmally low - something like $200 or $250 compensation should everything go pear-shaped for you. Paypal is not much better.
If you know the label of the person and/or address, this is a pretty simple matter. Report it to the United States Postal Service; they are probably 1 of the biggest government agencies who have anyone clout in the tribunals. They also have a special dislike for mail-order scams.
There's forever reporting it to Louis Vuitton themselves. They, too, are pretty hateful, and think nought of sending the full clout of the statute down on the pohardly everd.
There's also small claims, if the object under melee is not worth over $5000, you can try this. Anything over, and the price of hiring a attorney might just not be worth it.
Bonus Section: Takashi Murakami (or more lovingly known as "Can you guess what I had to look for in the last six months?")
The famous Japanese artiste, Takashi Murakami, was tapped on the elbow at LVMH to chart a couple of limited version chips for a few Louis Vuitton bags. He basically rotated the LV earth upside down with his cheerful, irreverent pieces. Bags that you will no doubt see in the weapon of women in New York City and Los Angeles: white and black leather bags with colorful monograms and beauties (the "Multicolore" line); pearly and black bags with colored charms, including that of an eye (the "Eye Love" line); ultra feminine monogrammed bags spotted over with floating sakura (cherry) blossoms with smiling happy faces (the "Cherry Blossom" line); and weird suitcases/jewelry cases with mysterious, quirky anime-ish roles on them: pandas, foreigners, and mysterious factory beings that look like they came directly from Pikmin (I believe these are also part of the "Cherry Blossom" line, but not sure, as these are a very infrequent beast indeed). They are a medley of lofty shape and kitschy popup mores, and they have been very popular; so popular that the waiting lists fknow next to nothing ofme of these items extend into the years. Murakami makes it pretty explicit that his Andy Warhol-esque vibe stems directly from commerce: his art process is "more about creating goods and selling them than about exhibitions." It's a sentiment that is hugged by the average bag-loving lady.
In some of the older limited edition items, there are no more waiting lists (the Cherry Blossom line) and the only way to get these is waiting on Ebay, basically. The white and black colored monograms are still "in print", so you can get your grubby gloves on one if you are compliant to stand on the waiting list in Louis Vuitton.
This part of the writeup is for those who are interested in the cherry blossom line, since they are even now one of the hardest items to get hold of (at least for authentic pieces) and unfortunately for numerous poor sods, they are also one of the most popular deserving to their striking appearance.
Murakami made very few items that sported the smiley face cherry blossoms; the bags accustom are not the sleek popular marvels like the Alma or even the Speedy, but rather very girly "I'm trying to be 13 rather than 30" variety of bags: rounded, bowtie-bedecked, studded asset, colored deep brown, sallow roseate, or warm lotion. These bags are not for the faint of heart, as dressing these bags can make you look incredibly fatuous. My surmise is that he made these bags to reverberate the Japanese girl sentiment of "buy all things kawaii."
There are 3 color combinations you can find any of the discontinued accessories in: the standard brown leather with pink blossoms; pale pink leather with, well, pinker blossoms; and cream leather with ruddy blossoms. The pale pink one might arguably be the most popular item, ever since Catherine from Sex and the City wore a pink Papillon on her slim arm (and administered to not look like a doofus doing so).
The Murakami cherry bloom accessory items out of print:
Mirror
A... well. Mirror. A mirror that originally cost ~$150 US. But apparently not so anymore.
Key Pouch
A wallet-shaped item with little hanging nails inside to hang your keys on. You use this to protect the inside of your bags/pockets from being scratched up by the key edges. Very small, and seems to be not much of a market on this. Original price was approximately ~$200; they typically sell for $300 now.
Address Book
Yes, an address paperback. No, I don't know why you'd buy this as this is going a leeetle too far. It averages around $300 now, which leads me to believe it's not a very popular item as inflation has not affected it significantly.
Cles
A small coin wallet. Originally ~$250. Very small, and one of the items that you may still find for under half a grand. This will probably change in the near future, as prices are going up very quickly and the cost of this item is already very close to ~$500.
Coin Purse
Another coin purse. I initially thought these were fake, as I've never seen reports of real ones, but looks like these are for real. They differ from the Cles in that they really look like wallets and the "stopper" folds over to mow, much like the Porte Tresors, while the cles is a smooth zippered packet. I can't say how much these are worth, but since the Cles ends at $400, I will risk a guess and say $500.
Porte Tresor
A checkbook sized purse. By far the hardest item to find (and the one I had to look for, sadness is me). These were originally nearly $500, but since these are incredibly hard to find, prices for these items lately have approached and surpassed the $1000 US brand. Even some of the bigger bags from this line don't go for much more than that. Somehow very melancholy.
Pochette
A small, rectangular bag that I believe is averaged for make-up, but can double as a purse (it appears to me like a really huge composition bag, but I guess some ladies carry more makeup than others (note: Porte Tresors do not fit in these, don't even bother)). Not sure how much they originally cost, but their current prices average $1000 US.
Papillon
A circular duffel-like bag with long loop knobs. Comes with a microscopic bow and a little gold latch. The name of this bag comes from the fact that when you lay the knobs of the bag out and look from above, it looks rather like a butterfly (I can see it provided I am heavily drunk and/or taking some very good narcotics). This is probably the only bag among the cherry blossoms that you can walk around with and still look dignified. Prices for these were originally approximately $850 US; now these are rapidly beginning to exceed the $2000 US mark.
Retro
The Retro is the pith of girly cuteness; I find these exceedingly hard to take seriously (perhaps if I was a 12 or 13 year girl, I would see differently). It is a half moon shaped bag whose chief attraction seems to be its huge bow and studs all overthe handles. Not sure how big it is, but probably very small, to mate its cuteness. These are around the $1500 US mark now.
Spring 2004, Murakami teamed up with Marc Jacobs to produce another small set of cherry blossom LV goods. These have pretty much sold out ahead they even hit stores; I wouldn't even guess to how long the waiting menu is. These look strikingly alter from the original: instead of leather, the current bags are made of mahogany-colored satin, with deep wine-colored cherry blossoms that look embroidered on. Don't know much about these, but these are still available. Not that you can furnish it.
Bags of this line:
Amarene
Beefed up looking Pochette.
Peloa
A miniature edition of the Papillon. I have no clue what you would put in these. Possibly keys and nothing more.
Conclusion
Unless you really, really love LV, shopping for them will give you the biggest headache in the world.
Related themes article：

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]