Fear and clothing: For fake’s sake, fake it till you make it

It was the best of times. It was the fakest of times. “It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” Charlie Dickens would be proud of us right now as we live out the halcyon season of peak fake.
1. The Donald’s great fakery has prevailed on  the global consciousness. How many lies has he spoken? How many truths obfuscated? How many great reality TV moments orchestrated?  MAGA be damned, it is the FAGA cap I am after: Fake America Great again.
2. Gucci is now and has always really been just a little bit Guccy. Alessandro Michele, master of the fashion moment, interprets the quicksands of truth in 2018 and Guccifies the brand for the cruise collection – memes, politics, artificial and not so artificial intelligence are directly reworked from the streets into 49% growth for Kering. He has capitalised on the slippery slope of cultural references of fakery all the way to the bank.
3. Daniel Dapper Dan Day loved a spot of fake Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Gucci back in 1980s Harlem. The original hip-hop hi-lo faker and shaker dressed all sorts of cultural interlopers: Mike ear-biting Tyson, Salt n Peppa, LLCool J. Dapper Dan, a couturier for the counterculture, a big black fuck you in the season of darkness. Shut down in 1992 by the brands he had shamelessly culturally appropriated, now he is being lauded by the very same cock-blocking corporations. Alessandro Michele shamelessly knocked off the shameless knockoff and replaced the Louis Vuitton fake logo with the fake/real Gucci logo. Next step Museum of Modern Art revival: Man of the Moment MOM at MOMA.
4. The generation raised on fake Insta-filters and an entirely spurious take on reality decides to embrace an account whose claim to fame is that it exposes the fakery in the fakest of industries: Diet Prada. The  hitherto mysterious but highly ethical truth warriors Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler expose, name and shame copycats like Kim Kardashian – a paragon of truth and honesty for fashionably profitable infractions. They singlehandedly exposed the copy of the Dapper Dan copy. Alessandro Michele said “touché it is, but an homage” and the rest is fake history. To celebrate their greatest success and to profit from their greatest expose, a Kim De Garçon hoodie celebrates the truth out there. 
5. Lest you think we are lagging behind this global trend, think again. Love Jozi hopped onto the unique virality of this fakery many, many moons ago. Ten Chinese moons ago to be precise. In 2008 Love Jozi faked themselves with a Chinese copycat campaign and cheaper knockoffs of the Jozi skyline, barbed wire fonts and barcodes they were famous for. These fakes suddenly manifested on a knockoff website called LUV Jozi, shot in fake China aka Cyrildene and sold on the streets for the street. Media watchdogs were scandalised by the ostensible ripoff. Love Jozi had made their point. Peak fake if I have ever seen it.