Discover Turkey, the land of fake fashion Discovering the world's largest counterfeit fashion market

If you, too, love to explore the related video column on YouTube, you may have come across one of those vlogs from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar in which the youtuber on duty embarks on a journey into what is the world's third largest market for fakes after China and Hong Kong. Cris4tay for example, a New York-based youtuber with about 6,000 subscribers, was one of the latest to venture into that world of bags «not made of leather or even plastic» in which secret passages reveal huge rooms filled with fakes of any brand. «Our sales have doubled in 2021, it's a real bargain if you buy in dollars or euros,» the owner of one of the Istanbul stores had told the Guardian. The loss in value of the Turkish lira and problems in the local economy have been two of the main ingredients in the success of the Turkish market, which has become an ideal place to buy items to resell later in other countries. A multimillion-dollar business, as revealed a few years ago by the «Gran Bazar» operation in which the Guardia di Finanza in Naples had arrested 53 people guilty of importing counterfeit garments from Turkey and then reselling them in boutiques in Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany and Puglia. Similar story that last year led to the seizure of 23,000 fake garments by the Guardia di Finanzia in Milan or that last March led to the arrest of a man guilty of having introduced twelve fake watches into Italy, starting precisely from Turkey.

A report published by Reuters in 2016 revealed the employment of Syrian refugee children inside Turkish factories, while the same year BBC Panorama spoke of men and children from Syria being employed inside factories producing garments. But while the fight against the counterfeit market may seem lost at the outset, the responsibility for trying to fight it falls as much on buyers as it does on brands. If those who buy are obligated to do so responsibly, brands should make it easier to buy by making their products readily available by focusing above all on a sustainable and responsible supply chain. But as in all cases, the solution is the simplest one, and never more so than in this case is demand creating supply by giving the buyer the chance to make a choice in which the stakes go far beyond a simple sneaker.