> Then you read the comments and realize that this item is not a original Prada item.
There is a very interesting discussion in Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah of how major fashion brands produce clothing:
First, the brand (e.g. "Calvin Klein") decides what they want - color, cut, material. They go to a bunch of shady Italian clothing manufacturers (the book is about the Italian mafia) and hold an auction to determine the price they'll pay for finished clothes and the amount they'll receive.
Once that auction completes, giving a price, quantity, and deadline, every manufacturer is permitted to accept the terms. Those who do are given the materials (cloth) at Calvin Klein's expense.
Every manufacturer who accepted the terms is then in a race to deliver. The first one to do so is paid. Everyone else is left with what would have been high-priced clothing if they'd finished making it a little faster; that stuff, obviously, often meets with an illegitimate branding tag and sells in counterfeit markets.
So my question to you is: suppose I go to an underground Italian market and buy a shirt made to Calvin Klein's exact specifications from material provided by Calvin Klein. Also, the branding tag on the shirt saying "Calvin Klein" is used without permission. Have I been cheated? Of what?
First of all, let's get things straight. A copy that matches the exact original specification with the same material is the mythological unicorn of the knock off business. Finding something genuine in an underground world that thrive on selling counterfeit goods is probably an adventure on its own.
You don't get cheated buying a stolen car if you were looking to buy a stolen car. Same thing here, you bought what you were looking for, no cheating.
More generally, you are going to pay more for a "perfect copy fake" than a basic fake, so you are in the same boat than the guy thinking he was buying the real stuff: if the vendor is lying, you were cheated out of your money.
So, this is common in clothing because, as described above, the purchasing process guarantees the production of many illegitimate copies for every one legitimately branded item of clothing. (Also common: two brands who serve different social classes contract with the same factory to purchase the exact same clothing, then sew different labels onto the identical clothing to create a large difference in retail price.)
I have no reason to believe the supply chain for sunglasses is anything like the supply chain for clothing. But I do have reason to believe that people who think sunglasses are less valuable by virtue of not being Prada are more interested in the brand than in the functionality.
If you want Prada sunglasses because you're The Right Kind Of Person and that kind of person wears Prada, getting genuine-but-discount items isn't really better than getting "fakes". Cheaply purchasing expensive sunglasses fakes a signal that you can afford them, but the fact that you can't will still be instantly apparent to the same people you were hoping to fool.
In theory, you've been cheated of the certainties that tend to go along with brand identity. Calvin Klein, as a brand, is associated with a certain amount of quality, of durability, of accuracy in fit, etc. You've been theoretically cheated of those assurances.
In practice, you may not have been cheated of anything. Generally speaking, the trendline for clothing manufacturers is a rise towards a peak, and then a gradual descent from there. Looping back around to the article, Bezos would refer to them as "Day 1" companies while they're still proving themselves, ensuring quality and fitness, and "Day 2" companies thereafter, once they've attained enough brand recognition that they can coast on their laurels. In many cases, quality goes down, fit and finish suffer, and, of course, margins go up.
There is a very interesting discussion in Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah of how major fashion brands produce clothing:
First, the brand (e.g. "Calvin Klein") decides what they want - color, cut, material. They go to a bunch of shady Italian clothing manufacturers (the book is about the Italian mafia) and hold an auction to determine the price they'll pay for finished clothes and the amount they'll receive.
Once that auction completes, giving a price, quantity, and deadline, every manufacturer is permitted to accept the terms. Those who do are given the materials (cloth) at Calvin Klein's expense.
Every manufacturer who accepted the terms is then in a race to deliver. The first one to do so is paid. Everyone else is left with what would have been high-priced clothing if they'd finished making it a little faster; that stuff, obviously, often meets with an illegitimate branding tag and sells in counterfeit markets.
So my question to you is: suppose I go to an underground Italian market and buy a shirt made to Calvin Klein's exact specifications from material provided by Calvin Klein. Also, the branding tag on the shirt saying "Calvin Klein" is used without permission. Have I been cheated? Of what?