Prada or Fraud-a?

Over the weekend, my best friend Courtney came down from Boston to show me a thing or two I didn't know about Chinatown. After stocking up on essentials, like a jar of pre-minced ginger for an absurdly low price and fruit from stands whose appearance and prices make you feel like you're in a developing country, we headed off on our real mission.

It seems that every time Courtney comes to New York, she wants to scour Chinatown for knock-off "designer" purses. I, in my efforts to both save money and pare down my belongings, wasn't that into the idea in the beginning. But then Courtney described the process to me and it began to sound very exciting. The basic protocol is this: You walk down the street or enter a stall with lots of bags on display. Someone will approach you and, in a low voice, ask you if you are interested in designer purses. If you answer in the affirmative, you follow them either down a staircase or to the back of the store where a false wall is swung backward to reveal a stockpile of bags made to look like Gucci, Prada, Luis Vuitton, you name it. Why the secrecy? Selling products that have designer names on them if they are not actually made by that designer is illegal. Many of the shopkeepers will ask you which designer you want your bag to be associated with, then glue the nameplate of your choosing in place. The going rate is anywhere from $25 to $45 for bags that look almost exactly like purses that sell for at least ten times that in stores like Bloomingdale's. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

 Courtney and I started walking down Mott Street. The main strip for this sort of thing is Canal, but we wanted to go to the famous Wo Hop Restaurant, located on Mott, for lunch, and so perused different stalls along the way looking for purses. We both decided that we'd love to have a simple, small, sleek black purse for going out to nice places in the evenings; both of us have plenty of huge, colorful purses that don't exactly exude sophistication.

Alas, as it turns out, the simple things are the hardest to come by. It seems that big purses are in, and so we saw almost no small ones. Anything that was remotely near the size we wanted tended to have a loud print or be covered with rhinestones or decorative chains or something. Because we were on the wrong street for it, we didn't get to go into any clandestine back rooms, but we did get to paw through bags of purses pulled secretively from inside hidden cupboards and behind curtains for our inspection. The whole experience was exhausting. We must have scoured at least 30 stalls, all of which were hung with purses from floor to ceiling, and we were at it for hours. Everything started to look the same, and indeed many of the purses were the same. I suspect that many of the stall owners are in cahoots with each other, and those who are not get their merchandise from the same suppliers. Courtney ended up finding a purse she liked and was able to bargain the seller down a few dollars - in Chinatown, haggling is expected, but don't for a second think you're going to be able to knock much off the asking price. She also found a great pair of silver earrings. Other than a tasty plate of noodles and some snap peas and bananas, I didn't end up with much, although I did find a great canvas for an upcoming art project in a discount art store that we passed on the way back to the subway.

So although I didn't find a purse, I did have a great time getting a look at just one of the many underworlds that lurks beneath the surface in this city.