Ummm......KASABOUTIQUE.....that wouldn't happen to be an advertisement, would it? Because, when you registered your nickname with Fodors, you would have learned, as the rest of us have, that advertising is not allowed.

kasaboutique-How can you sleep at night knowing that you are helping to fund terrorists whose sole purpose is to destroy us? Shame on you! And shame on you for hawking your illegal goods here!

They are ugly, too...

Hello Everybody,

I did not come back to this forum until today and your debate is pretty active and interesting to me and I would like to reply to one or two comments made here. By selling Fake handbags we do not feed criminals or terrorism as someone stated; speaking for myself, my bags are coming from south korea, is this a criminal country? For those of the websites selling replicas coming China I dont believe they exploit poor chinese workers, do you know that there is almost none private enterprise in China?, do you know that almost all of them are state-owned or joint ventures between western firms and the chinese government? Interesting no? The U.S, Europe are promoting 'globalization', there you are, China is in the move too! Please open your eyes on the world, read, talk with people living abroad, travel and you will see that what started as a 'local' business because women in Asia cannot afford to buy a bag the same price as women in Europe or U.S can eventually has spread evrywhere because people get more aware, informed and unwilling to pay just for a brand stamped on a fashionable bag which will go out of fashion next year and supported by heavy marketing and advertising which represents almost half of the price you pay when you buy a real designer's bag. I dont feel bad at all because I used to work for the vuitton group ten years ago and the myth of vuitton is based on what : a very expensive leather trim stitched on a cheap plastic canvas monogrammed that everybody believes to be leather, thats what vuitton is all about, knowing this, just the logo, no craftmanship unlike hermes where there is one worker for one bag, so it is up to you to buy the real ones and it is cool if you can do so but dont throw the stone to those who like fashion but dont have the money to follow the dictat of the magazines and buy fake ones. Thanks.

I think the previous poster, a person who has NEVER posted here before, clearly has ulterior motives that lead me to question their facts.

Knockoffs that look like a designer product happen all the time. Where do you think the department stores get their fashion choices from? A similar looking product that doesn't use the tradename from the product to imply authenticity is one thing.

What the post was about is the fake Gucci bag or Vuitton. The fact remains, many of those bags are sold illegally by vendors who pay no sales tax, are made by people with less than honorable intentions, and are a cash resource for organized crime, whether your run of the mill dirtbag criminal or your terrorist.

Kansasboutique, please just stop. Not only are you completely clueless on the subject of which you are writing, but while doing it you condone poor working conditions and theft of copyright ownership.

Yours is not a victimless crime.

"I did not COME BACK to this forum until today . . ". Since this is your first ever post that doesn't seem possible does it . . . . . . .

It looks as though Kasaboutique's comments were either too offensive or self-serving for this website & they were most probably deleted.

Actually - KASABOUTIQUE was bold enough to come here a while back (3/3/04) and post an advertisement for the illegal merchandise she is hawking. See posts from BrimhamRocks and buckeyemom above. Fodors rightly pulled her previous post.

But I say let her spew this nonsense here - I prefer to let people hang themselves trying to defend themselves with poorly worded and poorly thought out arguments (not to mention spelling and grammar). It's a fun sport.

I'm just dumbfounded by KASABOUTIQUE's post.

To quote: "women in Asia cannot afford to buy a bag the same price as women in Europe or US can".

"Asia is continent of the eastern hemisphere N of equator forming a single landmass with Europe (the conventional dividing line between Asia & Europe being the Ural Mountains & main range of the Caucasus Mountains); has numerous large offshore islands including Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Malay Archipelago, Taiwan, the Japanese chain, & Sakhalin area 17,139,445 square miles."

The above is a quote from websters. KASABOUTIQUE has just implied that there are a couple of million women in that hemisphere that cannot afford Louis Vitton.

Okay - I admit it. I bought a knock off in Battery Park last Oct. I really didn't care about the name but I did like the style of the bag and bartering with the guys selling them was a hoot.

But naturally you get what you pay for . The bag is junk.
- The famous name tag fell off after about a week.
- The zipper sticks constantly and
- The two handles are uneven.
- Its not leather but I knew that when I bought it.
- I only paid $18 and its not even worth that.

A plastic bag from Target would have cost less with no moral dilemma associated with it.