When Christina Ernst dreamed up the concept for a self-twirling dress, she made it and then programmed its robotic arms to lift the hem of a romantic pink smock gown and to spin it left and right. She turned fantasy into reality with a flickering, faux candle-lined corset top, too, as well as a cathedral gown with stained-glass-like panels that could be illuminated like windows seen at night. Over the past year, the 28-year-old has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers for her whimsical fashion projects that incorporate coding and circuitry. Based in Chicago, when Ernst isn’t working as a software engineer at Google’s West Loop office, she’s home experimenting with what she calls “fashioneering” projects, then documenting each one for her online audience. Through her tutorial website and social media accounts She Builds Robots, she hopes to encourage more young women to enter STEM fields. “When I was growing up, I would have loved to see some sort of tech representation (for) my own interests in fashion, art and drawing,” she told CNN during an interview at Chicago Public Library’s Maker Lab, where Ernst had a 12-week residency, demonstrating how some of her designs worked. “I loved all of these things, but never thought that they had any compatibility with the tech world…It’s really important to me to center (my tutorials) on the interests that a lot of teen girls already have, to meet them where they are.” Ernst often goes for feats of fantasy, with her first viral videos documenting her Medusa dress adorned with several undulating robotic serpents, including one programmed to make eye contact using AI facial recognition. But the “stupidest” thing she’s made with her computer engineering degree — as she declared in her most-watched video — was for one of her Halloween costumes. In it, she shows a small, motorized 3D-printed replica of a familiar foodie rat affixed to a headband, pulling two small handfuls of her hair up and down in its paws as she slices up an onion in the kitchen. To test her version of Remy from “Ratatouille,” she gave the rodent yarn first so it wouldn’t yank her hair out. After seeing the reaction online, with nearly 45 million views to date across Instagram and TikTok, she took some commenters’ advice to upgrade him further. “The first version I made just had his arms going up and down. I coded them to move randomly,” she explained. “And a bunch of people in my comments had a wonderful idea to sync it up to my movements, and I just happened to have (an) accelerometer laying around. It’s a pretty common circuitry piece, so I spent the weekend wiring it up.” ‘Magical’ technology Ernst says she usually has multiple ambitious ideas ticking away in her mind, sometimes for months at a time. Her projects are not meant to represent the future of tech or fashion, though, as she emphasizes, but are instead a conversation-starter for young makers and designers to see technology presented in a different way. “Technology really is magical to me… When I say I make robotic dresses, I never want it to look like how people picture it,” she said. “The wonder and the whimsy is very important to me. All of my designs really introduce that aspect to (engage) people who might not traditionally be interested in engineering.” Though Ernst isn’t planning a more formal entry into fashion, robotics on the runway have led to some of the industry’s most memorable moments. In 1998, Alexander McQueen staged a frenetic moment of performance art when two robots spray-painted a dress worn by model Shalom Harlow. Two years ago, Coperni partnered with Boston Dynamics in Paris to send out the company’s robot canines to interact with models, including Lila Moss, to take off their coats and tote around handbags. The wonder-evoking combination is one that Ernst discovered early on, through the first fashion project she made in college: a Bluetooth-controlled color-changing LED dress she created during a hackathon at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The number of girls who approached her exhibition booth asking for instructions on how to recreate the dress was a “lightbulb moment”, she explained, as she realized that fashion projects could be a gateway into STEM studies. In high school, she was a mathlete who loved reworking her clothes, but felt that when it came time to apply for universities, she had to choose between the two fields. “A lot of people think that fashion is completely divorced from the sciences, but that is not true at all. The history of the computer is actually textile history,” Ernst said. The punch-card Jacquard loom, invented in the early 19th-century for weaving, is considered a precursor to modern computing because its use of binary code inspired early computer design. “That history is very interwoven.” Embracing failure In her own practice, Ernst combines a range of disciplines and techniques, from 3D modeling and laser cutting to hand dyeing and knitting, she explained. Because of that, she often prototypes her projects in simpler materials such as cardboard “before dropping into high-tech tools.” Since college, Ernst has explored various ways to design curriculum for students. She received a small grant in 2017 for her hackathon project to create introductory circuit projects with art and fashion in mind and provide them online for free. She also provided educational kits to five public schools in Chicago from 2022 to 2023. And this past year, she was a maker-in-residence at Chicago Public Library, teaching free classes at the Harold Washington Library branch while growing her online audience. There, she taught people from all walks of life, from young students to parents to retirees. In one case, a Girl Scout leader who attended and learned to program a motor said she would teach the new skills to her troop, Ernst recalled, and offer a new electronics badge that members could earn. During her residency, Ernst created a new design for the library’s display window, a gold and blush Phoenix gown with feathers that rise and fall, activated by passersby who place their hands up to a panel on the window. The garment is a tribute to the Garden of the Phoenix, which was built in Jackson Park for the 1893 Chicago Fair as a symbol of US-Japanese friendship; the park was set on fire in the wake of World War II but was later reconstructed. Though at first, Ernst had hoped to trigger the dress using motion sensors, then through viewers’ phones, she eventually (and quickly) had to rig up a more simple solution using light-sensitive photoresistors that activate when covered. “So much of it is trial and error, and I think my computer engineering background and my software job really builds those skills of persistence, of debugging, of experimentation, and I’m able to bring that over into my experimental fashion, where I’ll often go through 6, 7, or 8 prototypes before I get close to something that works,” she said. She’s learned that showing or explaining the unsuccessful versions of her projects to her followers have sometimes become just as interesting to them. “I was surprised by how many people have commented that they like seeing the failures. They like seeing the prototypes that don’t work,” she said. “It helps them see that it is OK to fail and OK to iterate — nobody inherently knows how to do these things.”
Indian author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday for “Heart Lamp,” a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of more than 30 years and which chronicle the everyday lives and struggles of women in southern India. The award was announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter in his role as chair of the five-member voting panel, at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern. It is the first time the award has been given to a collection of short stories. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator — and ninth female translator — to win the prize since it took on its current form in 2016. Mushtaq is the sixth female author to be awarded the prize since then. Written in Kannada, which is spoken by around 65 million people, primarily in southern India, Porter praised the “radical” nature of the translation, adding that “It’s been a joy” to listen to the evolving appreciation of the stories by members of the jury. “These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects,” said Porter. ”It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.” The book, which beat five other finalists, comprises stories written from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India in her translation. Mushtaq, who is a lawyer and activist as well as writer, told a short list reading event on Sunday that the stories “are about women – how religion, society and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates.” The 50,000-pound ($66,000) prize money is to be divided equally between author and translator. Each is presented with a trophy too. The International Booker Prize is awarded every year. It is run alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction, which will be handed out in the fall.
While much of the discussion around the Cannes film festival red carpet has been centered on celebrities and their entitlement to long trains and naked dresses, Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård bravely poses a different question: What if in 2005’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” Brad Pitt wore sky-high leather boots instead of Angelina Jolie? On Sunday, Skarsgård, who was attending a premiere of Wes Anderson’s latest film “The Phoenician Scheme,” arrived onto La Croisette in a jaw-dropping pair of thigh-high boots. Styled by Harry Lambert, the square-toe creations were straight off Saint Laurent’s Fall-Winter 2025 runway and engulfed the actor’s entire leg, only finishing where one might imagine his boxer shorts to begin. It was half-dominatrix, half-fishing wader, and wholly surprising. Tall leather boots have long been considered a sartorial shorthand for female sex appeal. Jolie, in her turn as the archetypal seductive assassin Jane Smith, famously wears a pair with fishnets, suspenders and a strapless PVC minidress under her satin-lined trench coat as she impersonates an escort to complete a mission. Julia Roberts’s performance as the sex worker Vivian in “Pretty Woman” (1990) wore a pair, as did Jane Fonda in her racy rendition of “Barbarella” in the ‘60s. Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway, only reaches aesthetic apotheosis in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006) after she slips on a pair of knee-high, hosiery-style leather boots. “Are you wearing…?” stutters Miranda Priestly’s vengeful and hierarchical first assistant, played by Emily Blunt, before being interrupted by Hathaway: “The Chanel boots? Yeah, I am” — a retort that has become one of the most satisfying moments of cinematic history. The history of the boot, however, is far more unisex. Thigh-highs date as far back as the 15th century, where they were typically worn by men — as demonstrated by the medieval skeleton found embedded in London’s River Thames in 2018. A potential sailor, fisherman or mudlark, the height of the boots suggested the man was working in the water when he died. They became more fashionable than functional during the Restoration period in England, where they were worn by King Charles I and his calvarymen or Cavaliers. Often complete with a heel that signified status, the riding-style leather boots could be extended fully, reaching the upper thighs, or folded down into cuffs. The boot wasn’t perceived as sexy, feminine footwear until the 1960s. In 1962, fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga unveiled a knee-high boot on the Fall-Winter runway. The next year, shoe designer Roger Vivier saw Balenciaga’s bet and raised him a few inches, designing a thigh-thigh silhouette for Yves Saint Laurent’s 1963 collection in alligator leather. “Ankle-deep, knee-high and even up to the thigh,” reported Vogue at the time. “This year’s best-looking legs will be marching up and down and back again in boots.” The rise of the thigh-high was just one of the many sartorial changes that came with the post-war “Youthquake.” Hemlines were growing shorter and attitudes to sex were changing. In the brave new world of Mary Quant’s miniskirt, a tall boot acted as the perfect picture frame for the exciting, never-before-seen terrain of a bare leg. In womenswear today, a flash of thigh is as ubiquitous as a crew neck T-shirt, but the male leg is far less familiar. Yet, the sentiment has already been embraced by actor Pedro Pascal, who donned the same Saint Laurent boots as Skarsgård in March, and labels Rick Owens, Martine Rose, Givenchy, Maison Margiela and GmbH have all designed their own pair. As we welcome daring gentleman dressers who are open to slipping on a pair of ballet flats and Mary Janes, the over-the-knee boot is nothing more than a logical next step.
A sculpture of the late American singer and poet Jim Morrison that went missing from his gravesite in Paris almost four decades ago has been found, according to French police. “After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Père Lachaise cemetery, has been found,” wrote the Paris Regional Judicial Police Directorate in an Instagram post on Friday. It added that “this iconic symbol for the singer’s fans was recovered” during an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office. “This was a chance discovery made during a search ordered by an examining magistrate at the Paris court,” the prosecutor’s office told CNN in a statement Tuesday. Jeff Jampol, manager of the Jim Morrison Estate, told CNN in a statement Tuesday that they were “happy to hear” of the statue’s rediscovery, adding: “Obviously it’s a piece of history, and one Jim’s family wanted there on his grave, so it’s gratifying to see that it’s been recovered.” “Now we’ll have to see what kind of shape the bust is in,” he continued. Morrison, the charismatic frontman of 1960s psychedelic rock band The Doors, died in 1971, aged just 27. His grave in the French capital attracts many music fans. Resting in the Père Lachaise cemetery, it is one of the most popular graves in Paris, according to the city’s official tourism website, with crowds gathering there on the anniversary of his death on July 3 every year. The bust, created by Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin, was installed on his tombstone on the 10th anniversary of his death, according to the official city of Paris website. However, it disappeared in 1988. The grave’s headstone, which was damaged in the 1980s, was replaced by his parents in 1990 with the epitaph “True to His Spirit” written on it in Greek. On the 20th anniversary of Morrison’s death in 1991, police had to disperse fans from the cemetery with tear gas due to unruly behaviour. By the 30th anniversary, alcohol and music had been banned, but thousands still turned up to his plot to lay wreaths and take photos. “Every day, somewhere in the world, a Doors song is played,” said former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek at the time. “The energy of Jim Morrison is still with us, in the ether.” Morrison, who was also known as “The Lizard King,” developed a reputation for his heavy alcohol drinking and shocking onstage antics. Morrison left the band in 1971 to focus on writing poetry and he moved to Paris with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson. However, he died in their Paris apartment later that year. Courson told authorities that she had found the singer dead in the bathtub. His cause of death is officially recorded as being heart failure but no autopsy was conducted, prompting conspiracy theories.
World Press Photo has cast fresh doubt over the authorship of “The Terror of War,” a picture better known as “Napalm Girl,” amid growing debate about one of the 20th century’s defining images. The organization, which named the image “Photo of the Year” in 1973, announced Friday that it has “suspended” its longstanding attribution to retired Associated Press (AP) photographer Nick Ut. An accompanying report said the “visual and technical” evidence “leans toward” an emerging theory that a Vietnamese freelance photographer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, took the photo. It is the latest twist in a controversy sparked by “The Stringer,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January claiming Nghe, not Ut, captured the iconic photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Nghe was one of more than a dozen people stationed at a highway checkpoint outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, as 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc and other villagers were mistaken for the enemy and bombarded by the South Vietnamese air force. (A year later, Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for the picture.) The film contains allegations that Nghe sold his photo to the AP before editors intervened to credit Ut, who was the agency’s staff photographer in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) at the time. CNN could not independently assess the claims because the film’s producer, the VII Foundation, did not respond to multiple requests for a copy of the documentary, which has not yet been publicly released. Ut has since repeatedly dismissed allegations that he did not take the photo. A statement released on the Vietnamese American photographer’s behalf by his attorney, Jim Hornstein, called World Press Photo’s decision to suspend attribution “deplorable and unprofessional.” The statement added that Nghe’s claim is “unsupported by a scintilla of corroborating evidence or eyewitness.” Earlier this month, the AP published a 96-page report on the matter. The investigation — which was based on eyewitness interviews, examination of cameras, a 3D model of the scene and surviving photo negatives — found “no definitive evidence” to justify changing the attribution. While the agency acknowledged that the passage of time and absence of key evidence made it “impossible to fully prove” whether Ut took the photo, crediting Nghe would “require several leaps of faith.” But World Press Photo took a different stance, with executive director Joumana El Zein Khoury writing on the organization’s website that the “level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution.” “At the same time, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship either,” she continued, adding: “The suspension will remain in place unless further evidence can clearly confirm or refute the original authorship.” Citing the AP investigation and the documentary, which included visual analysis by Paris-based research group Index, World Press Photo said there are “substantial and credible reasons” to doubt the existing attribution. The organization’s report centers on several “unresolved issues,” including the camera used to take the photo and analyses of Ut’s position relative to the image’s vantage point. A reconstruction of the scene by Index, based on a “geo-based timeline,” suggested that Ut would have needed to have “taken the photo, run 60 meters (197 feet), and returned calmly, all within a brief window of time,” World Press Photo said. The organization described that scenario as “highly unlikely” though “not impossible.” The AP, meanwhile, has disputed the 60-meter figure, saying that Ut’s purported position on the highway — which is based on “shaky,” low-resolution footage filmed by a TV cameraman — could have been as little as 32.8 meters away from where the image was captured, and that the photographer “could have been in the position to have taken the shot.” World Press Photo also pointed to ongoing questions over equipment. The AP has previously said it is “likely” the photo was taken using a Pentax camera, which Nghe is known to have used. Ut, however, had frequently said he carried cameras by Leica and Nikon. When questioned for the AP’s investigation, Ut told the agency he also used Pentax cameras. The photo agency said it subsequently found negatives in its archives, shot by Ut in Vietnam, with “the characteristics of a Pentax camera.” World Press Photo also noted the possibility that another person altogether — Vietnamese military photographer Huynh Cong Phuc, who sometimes sold images to news agencies — took the photo. The AP’s investigation noted that he, like Ut and Nghe, “could have been in the position to have taken the shot.” Earlier this month, Ut welcomed the findings of the AP’s latest report, saying in a statement that it “showed what has always been known, that the credit for my photo … is correct.” He added: “This whole thing has been very difficult for me and has caused great pain.” Appearing in the world’s newspapers the day after it was taken, “The Terror of War” became a symbol of opposition to the Vietnam War. In the decades since, Ut has campaigned for peace alongside the photo’s subject, now known as Kim Phuc Phan Thi, who survived her injuries and was granted political asylum by Canada in 1992. Speaking to CNN to mark the image’s 50th anniversary in 2022, the photographer recounted his version of events, saying: “I saw Kim running and she (screamed in Vietnamese) ‘Too hot! Too hot!’ “When I took the photo of her, I saw that her body was burned so badly, and I wanted to help her right away. I put all my camera gear down on the highway and put water on her body.” Ut said he put the injured children in his van and drove them for 30 minutes to a nearby hospital. “When I went back to my office, the (dark room technician) and everyone who saw the picture told me right away it was very powerful, and that the photo would win a Pulitzer,” he added. In a statement emailed to CNN, the organizer of the Pulitzer Prizes said it “does not anticipate future action” regarding Ut’s award. “The Pulitzer Prizes depend on submitting news organizations to determine the authorship of their entries,” the statement read. “AP’s extensive review showed insufficient proof to withdraw credit.”
Photographer Derek Ridgers’ introduction to the Cannes Film Festival arrived in 1984, when he was commissioned to shoot the DJ and rapper Afrika Bambaataa — in town to promote his cameo in Stan Lathan’s “Beat Street” — for the music magazine, NME. “I don’t think I’d ever really thought about Cannes, or the film festival, before I went,” Ridgers, widely celebrated for his distinctive portraits of British subcultures, told CNN via email. “Every year one sees items about it on TV, but it hadn’t impacted my life in any significant way.” Ridgers would return to the French resort town a further 11 times, during which he said he “only ever saw two films” — “Beat Street” and Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s “December Bride” (he’d been at art school with the director). “If you’re on the French Riviera and the sun’s out, why would you choose to go to the cinema if you didn’t have to?” he reasoned. Instead, Ridgers focused on the compelling and sometimes controversial scenes that unfolded around him, shooting celebrities, young models and upcoming actresses, as well as fellow photographers. Three decades on, some 80 images from Ridgers’ archive have been brought together in a new book, “Cannes,” published by IDEA. The festival it presents is in many ways a different kind of spectacle to its contemporary iteration. This year’s edition, which runs through May 24, will largely be experienced via social media (the official Festival de Cannes Instagram page has 1.3 million followers alone, while thousands of tagged videos populate TikTok). In Ridgers’ pictures, made in the 1980s and 1990s, there’s not a single cell phone and barely a point and shoot camera; star-making-moments, political statements and fashion history were all typically reported by TV and printed media. “My interest has always been people and, I suppose, a study of the human condition,” said Ridgers, who, alongside his professional assignments, spent much of the 1980s and the decade prior documenting London’s punks, skinheads and New Romantics. “The film festival was my first extended foray into reportage, but it’s still all people doing what people do,” he noted, reflecting on how his book “Cannes” was shaped by this same curiosity, in tandem with his rejection of the more traditional red carpet set-up. “There’s so much of life’s rich pageant on show during Cannes, there are great photographic opportunities almost everywhere,” he continued. Shooting both in color and black and white, Ridgers captured icons such as Clint Eastwood, Helmut Newton and John Waters, as well as then-up and coming models like Frankie Rayder, who appears on the book’s cover dressed in diamonds and fur (the surrounding crowd adopting casual jeans and T-shirts), and performers attending the Hot D’Or adult film industry awards too, including the late Lolo Ferrari. “During the years I was going, the film festival seemed to become a bigger and bigger deal,” shared Ridgers. “When the porn stars were having their awards show there as well (the Hot D’Or’s ran from 1992-2001), that added a layer of craziness and made for some interesting photographic juxtapositions. The main film festival seemed to take itself awfully serious, and having the porn stars there lightened the mood somewhat.” Young women then, adult entertainers and wannabe film stars alike, are a constant throughout the new book, posing with friends or performing for the camera; showing off in an attempt to emulate Brigitte Bardot’s culture-shifting debut at the festival in 1953, while promoting “Manina, the Girl in the Bikini.” Ridgers, adopting the gaze of a bystander, recorded it all, from the playful to the outrageous, and sometimes the outright questionable, as in the picture of another photographer taking an upskirting shot. “It seemed shocking then, too, which was why I took the photograph,” he explained. “I was appalled by the unabashed brazenness of it. Someone doing that nowadays would, rightly, get arrested.” Stressing that he never considered himself above his peers, Ridgers further recalled that he also never felt any sense of kinship with them, and the book concludes with an image of some photographers holding and discussing one of his images, oblivious to his presence. “The whole time I went to the festival, I don’t think I had one conversation with any of the other photographers,” he said. “They shouted at me occasionally, for getting in their way, but that’s hardly a conversation. It sounds terrible, I know, but I just ignored them. I’m competitive and very focused — if I’m standing around chatting, I may be missing a good photograph.” In “Cannes” however, the mood is one of debauchery with a light-hearted sensibility. “I’m serious about my work but this is not a particularly serious photobook,” said Ridgers, acknowledging the nature of its contents. “Most of the photographs are frivolous, and some are simply outrageous. These days, because of the French law of droit à l’image (a right to one’s image) it’s harder to publish photographs of people in public without their permission — how that works in the era of the camera phone, I have no idea. My photographs are testament to what fun, crazy and at times, ludicrous, things happened back then.”
A bronze statue of Melania Trump near her hometown in Slovenia has gone missing, five years after it replaced a wooden statue damaged by arsonists. Slovenian police told CNN that they’d been informed of a theft in the village of Rozno, where the statue was situated, on Tuesday. Officers “conducted an inspection of the crime scene and collected information,” police spokesperson Alenka Drenik Rangus said in a statement Friday. “The investigating judge and the district state prosecutor were informed about the theft.” No further details were given by authorities. Photos published in Slovenian local media show most of the statue has been sawed off, leaving just its feet and ankles attached to the tree trunk it stood on. The statue was situated beside a river near Sevnica, a small, picturesque town about 90 kilometers (56 miles) east of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana. Before this bronze statue was stolen, its original wooden incarnation was set alight in July 2020 by vandals. Badly burnt, it was then removed from its plinth before being displayed at an art gallery in the Slovenian town of Koper later that year and at an exhibition in Croatia in 2023. Artist Brad Downey told CNN that he had always intended to make a bronze version of the statue to exhibit in an institutional setting, but decided to use it to replace the wooden sculpture after it was badly burned. Downey had originally commissioned the wooden sculpture from local conceptual artist Ales Zupevc, better known as Maxi, who was born in the same hospital and the same year as Melania Trump. Its somewhat abstract depiction of the first lady in the sky-blue dress she wore to her husband’s first presidential inauguration in 2017 drew mixed reviews from locals. Sevnica is a sleepy town of 5,000 that has profited from its most famous daughter, placing itself firmly on the tourist trail and selling a range of Melania-themed products, including honey, chocolate and cake.
Many people will have experienced the excitement of receiving an online order, or that hit of dopamine that follows a new purchase. But what happens when you unbox the goods, only to find that it wasn’t what you were expecting? Worse yet, when it turns out that you spent a significant sum on a product that could potentially be counterfeit? That was the dilemma Joan Kim had to contend with. In a TikTok video uploaded in December 2024 that has since amassed over 1 million views, the Los Angeles-based content creator shared her frustration at “being scammed” by US luxury department store-chain Saks Fifth Avenue. “It’s the holidays and I wanted to buy a gift,” Kim said, gesturing to an ivory-colored leather bag on her shoulder. Priced at $2,600, it was a tote by The Row, the discreet, logo-free luxury label founded by actresses-turned-designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. “I’ve been needing a bag and I wanted one that wasn’t so ‘loud,’” Kim told CNN over email. (As) I already had The Row bag in medium, I wanted to buy the bigger size in black.” And while she was initially delighted to receive her order, made online through Saks Fifth Avenue (a receipt of the purchase was viewed by CNN), that joy quickly faded as she noticed discrepancies between her new purchase and the same style she already owned. Kim said that the dust bag it arrived in was a different color and fabric, its drawstring visibly thicker. The stitched-on rectangular logo, bearing the brand’s name, also looked dissimilar. “I had a feeling it was off,” said Kim, adding that when she opened the dust bag, what she found inside “was even weirder.” Looking at her cream bag, which she had purchased directly from The Row’s Melrose Place store, and the black version that had arrived from Saks, she observed multiple differences — from the material used in the lining to its shape when worn. Convinced that the new bag was a fake, Kim was deeply disappointed. After all, Saks Global, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue as well as luxury stores Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, is a respected entity, known for selling high-end brands including Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana. She contacted Saks’ customer service department, which asked her to return the product via post. But Kim wasn’t satisfied with the response. Her concern, she explained, was that she would have no physical evidence to prove her claim — and that she consequently wouldn’t receive a refund — if she wasn’t believed. Ultimately, Kim took the bag to a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills and received a refund in gift card form, but the experience had left a sour taste in her mouth. “After the incident, I haven’t purchased anything online,” she told CNN, adding that in the future she would only shop for luxury goods in-person. Saks confirmed to CNN that the incident had been resolved, but did not comment on whether the returned bag was counterfeit and what had happened to it. “Return fraud has become a pervasive issue for retailers, and, as a result, we consistently evaluate our returns approach,” a global spokesperson for Saks said in an emailed statement. “As part of this, we’ve identified the need to take additional steps in our processes, including more time for careful product quality inspection and authentication, to ensure that customers receive high quality authentic merchandise in future orders.” The spokesperson added: “Our fulfillment centers manage millions of shipments every year, but it is unacceptable for any customer to have this experience. Our top priority is ensuring our customers enjoy the luxury shopping experience for which Saks Fifth Avenue is known, and we continuously work to improve our processes.” A global occurrence Kim’s experience isn’t as unusual as you might think, with shoppers across the world reporting similar incidents. Tiffany Kim (no relation), a California-based dental hygienist, was also shocked to discover that a recent purchase — a top-handle bag, also by The Row — could potentially be counterfeit. She had bought it from Ssense, a Canadian online luxury retailer that stocks Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Auralee, among other fashionable labels. When Kim received the bag in January, she had her suspicions, because the quality didn’t match her expectations. She ended up purchasing the same style directly from The Row. On placing the two bags side-by-side, they appeared distinctively different in size, shape and material. The product that had arrived from Ssense was also missing a warranty card. Kim was astonished. “This bag is not cheap; it’s about $1,000,” she said in a video shared with her 39,900 followers on Instagram. Kim did not respond to requests for comment from CNN. On her video alleging that she received a fake product, Ssense commented that it had gotten in touch directly in hopes of resolving the issue. In a statement provided to CNN, Ssense did not comment on whether the bag that Kim received was counterfeit but said: “We are committed to ensuring the authenticity of all products sold. We have measures in place to prevent the sale of counterfeit items.” Ssense added that all returns undergo “thorough examination.” British retailer Flannels, which sells high-end brands including Versace, Burberry and Moncler, has also been subject to complaints from multiple shoppers, who claim that their purchases, ranging from a Saint Laurent belt to pair of Gucci monogrammed sandals, are counterfeit. (The shoppers did not respond to requests for comment from CNN seeking to verify their purchases.) Similar complaints have plagued Flannels for years: In 2018, the retailer was accused of selling fake products by disgruntled shoppers who had purchased Moncler items, after the Italian label said that their purchases were not genuine products. When approached by CNN, Flannels declined to comment on the allegations that the products they sold online were fake, and what it was doing to prevent potential fraudulent returns. Cracks in the system In a sector where trust and credibility are paramount to success, it’s unlikely that an established department store or multi-brand boutique — which tends to have longstanding relationships with luxury brands — would knowingly sell a counterfeit product. Yet, as global supply chains increasingly diverge from traditional models, in response to inflationary pressures and geopolitical and economic changes, they’re getting more complex — and more challenging to police. It’s through these avenues that counterfeits may be slipping through, warned Simon Geale, executive vice president of procurement at Proxima, a supply chain firm owned by Bain & Company. One method that fake products enter the retail system may be through fraudulent returns, in which a customer returns a completely different item while claiming they’re the original product, Geale told CNN over the phone. Processing returns is a complicated and costly process, and it is possible that some stores may not have the infrastructure in place to thoroughly inspect the returned items, he warned. “It’s rare, but the impact is substantial,” Geale said, noting financial loss and reputational damage. Ona Simpson, a luxury supply chain consultant and the co-founder of Uncovered Agency, whose clients have included Burberry and Vivienne Westwood, asserts that big retailers are well equipped to handle returns, but the issue may be with the suppliers. While the luxury industry has traditionally operated a wholesale model (high-end stores typically purchase and hold inventory from brands), a growing number of retailers, including Net-a-Porter and Nordstrom, have turned to e-concessions or drop-shipping, because it enables them to source high-end products while avoiding less upfront investment. The danger is that stores have less oversight over where the product has come from, said Simpson. “As a customer you might go onto a website — let’s say Saks. You might buy a Prada bag thinking it’s coming from the Saks warehouse, but that might not be true.” As to why a store might resort to such means, Simpson pointed to the exclusive nature of luxury goods, where scarcity is typically associated with desirability and value. Increasingly, to control their image and brand integrity, luxury brands have been limiting which distributors or stores can sell their products, as they instead prioritize direct retail channels (such as their own stores or e-commerce site). For example, Chanel notoriously does not sell its fashion and handbag collections online (those items can only be purchased in the brand’s physical boutiques). That can make it difficult for retailers to keep up and cater to trendy customers who want the latest launch or the buzziest brand of the moment. “A lot of high-end retailers now (stock) products from independent boutiques and suppliers because they have found this to be a way to (sell) brands they want,” said Simpson. However, that puts the retailers at risk of receiving counterfeit products without realizing, she noted. “(Stores) are trying to keep customers happy, but (fraudsters) are taking advantage of that.” Simpson’s hope is that the recent incidents will give stores a wakeup call to take greater preventative measures that protect their integrity, as well as seek greater differentiation at a time when retail has become increasingly homogenous. It’s a decision that would also benefit shoppers, who are now seemingly faced with the same choices everywhere they go, as stores stock the same fashion labels and products. “There are increased counterfeits floating around, so every step of the way, there’s a greater chance of mistakes or fraud happening,” Simpson warned.
