On Canal Street, Fake Bags That Are Not for Sale

Peering through the windows of the storefront at the corner of Broadway and Canal Street, it might seem like just another upscale boutique. Inside, luxury handbags — Dior’s Lady D-lite, Louis Vuitton’s Loop, Loewe’s Puzzle bag, Telfar’s Shopping Bag, and several Hermès Birkins among them — are arranged on a grid of white shelves and lit like individual works of art.

But all of the merchandise at this shop is fake. Even the ceiling lamp is a knockoff of a Serge Mouille design. Window shoppers will notice that they can’t just walk in. A sign noting hours — Monday: closed; Tuesday: closed. Wednesday: closed; et cetera — directs interested passers-by to scan a QR code for more information.

What looks like a new store is actually an exhibition, “Ask Yourself What’s Real,” that can be viewed only from the street. The installation, which will be in place until early September, showcases some three dozen “superfakes” — or particularly convincing counterfeit handbags — sent to the RealReal.

Historically, the best superfake bags have taken the form of long-popular styles like Birkins, Louis Vuitton Speedy bags, Chanel flap bags and Dior and Goyard totes. But lately, employees at the luxury retail marketplace are seeing more and more exquisite imitations of products from brands like Khaite, Jil Sander and the Row, which can be harder to distinguish, said Hunter Thompson, the director of authentication at the RealReal.

“The leather might be great,” said Mr. Thompson as he picked up a small, black, fake Double Circle bag by the Row that was on display at the Canal Street exhibition. “If I saw somebody walking down the street with this, and I look at these things every day, I wouldn’t really know.”

The exhibition’s concept — and its location on a street known as the epicenter of counterfeit merchandise in New York — were meant to inspire conversations about authenticity, a pillar of the business model used by the RealReal, which was founded in 2011 and has struggled financially after becoming a publicly traded company in 2019.