Ridgewood boutique helps identify real designer handbags

RIDGEWOOD - Ever wonder if that Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Prada handbag hanging in your closet is the real deal?

Savvy Chic Consignment Boutique in Ridgewood is putting an end to those worries with its authentication service. While the service normally costs $30 per item, the boutique had a free authentication event from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, allowing customers to check any of their designer bags and get a certificate of authenticity.

“Sometimes people just want to know what they have,” said Randi Morein, owner of Savvy Chic. “They might have inherited an item or received a gift.”

Every bag that is sold in the boutique, which has been around for 10 years, is always authenticated before being put on the shelves, but in recent years, community members have visited the boutique with handbags bought in different places, wanting to check if they are real. 

After getting a Louis Vuitton bag passed down to her about eight years ago, Michelle Nicodelo of Wyckoff was finally given the opportunity to discover if it was real during the event.

“I think it’s amazing, it’s not something you can find anywhere else,” said Nicodelo of the service.  

The boutique uses a program called Entrupy, which takes a photo of the purses with a special camera that matches it with hundreds of microscopic photos of authentic handbags to determine if it's real. The program has a 95.5 percent success rate, said Morein.

Discovering that a designer bag is a fake is more common than people think. From 2007 to 2013, the market for counterfeit and pirated goods grew from $250 billion annual to more than $461 billion, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“It happens a lot,” said Morein. “Then we have to tell people that their bag isn’t real. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Luckily for many visitors at the Savvy Chic event, they hadn’t fallen victim to the counterfeit bag trade. More than twenty people had their bag check by 12:30 p.m., all of which were identified as authentic.

Nancy Smith of East Orange, who brought two Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags with her, was grateful for the chance to see how authentic her purses truly were. Maureen Ripalda of Washington Township also took advantage of the service, bringing in 15 bags that she had collected over the course of eight years.

“If you want to resell it, it’s nice to have the certification,” said Smith.

If someone is looking to purchase a designer bag, one tip to keep in mind is if the price is low, the chance the bag is real is also low, said Morein.

“Make sure to buy from a reputable dealer who stands behind their pieces,” said Morein.