The world of fashion dupes is a sad and fascinating one. Fascinating because it’s always interesting to see what styles captivate people enough to spawn knockoffs, especially from multiple outlets. Sad because I generally see their proliferation eroding people’s ability to value the labor that drives the fashion industry, or acknowledge the environmental distress it’s creating. A vocal corner of the internet insists that no clothing item, bag, or shoe should cost more than the prices you see on SHEIN, that the quality of dupes is effectively the same, and that any price discrepancy is due exclusively to label-driven clout and/or corporate greed.

The defensiveness runs even hotter when someone points out the class aspirations at the heart of the dupe economy. Americans are so desperate to believe that they don’t care about class, and if they do, it’s only insofar as they are class-conscious, not class-envious. As if class envy isn’t sewn into the insistence that nobody can tell the difference between your knockoff and the real thing. And as if class shame isn’t what twitches your eyelid when I say “knockoff” rather than “dupe.” Just because America seeks to make class invisible doesn’t mean it’s imaginary.

Anyway, the Walmart Birkin. AKA, the Wirkin. So called because it looks like Hermes’s long-famous Birkin bag, and because Walmart has been stocking it. (It’s worth noting that it’s not Walmart brand, but one of those items sold by numerous “brands” with names that look like someone sneezed while typing and just kept it moving.1 Like a lot of the big box stores, Walmart is also quietly serving as a dropshipping outlet.) The Birkin bag has been around since 1984, designed and named for actress, singer, and general style icon Jane Birkin. As a rich and famous French-by-chioce woman, Jane was famously casual about her expensive bag, overstuffing it and carrying it everywhere.

The bag became such a status symbol that Sex and the City dedicated an entire episode to it, which inspired me to name my Philodendron Birkin “Lucy Liu.” The bag is notoriously expensive, but cost isn’t the only barrier. A waitlist is involved. As Samantha Jones learns, if you want to buy a Birkin from Hermès, you need to be genuinely elite. Celebrities dedicate whole wings of their closets to their Birkin collections to then show off on social media or name-drop in songs. This ludicrous scarcity has turned these bags into the ultimate status symbol for the girls that get it.

I am old enough to remember several iterations of Birkin dupes, from the defiantly satirical THIS NOT A BIRKIN bags to the one I bought from Target 12 years ago not knowing it was a dupe of anything. Jane would’ve been proud of how thoroughly I wore that mug out, though, which wasn’t that impressive since it was made of plastic and stitched together with floss. But I digress.

The Wirkin has captivated the girlies this time around for a few reasons that I can tell:

Even Bethenny Frankel2 has weighed in. In true Bethenny style, she includes a flurry of her own Birkins in her review to serve as comparison points.

My favourite aspect of her review is actually the comments. J’adore how many people are acting like they’re choosing not to spend $12k on a handbag, due to their good sense and moral superiority. None of us can afford to spend that much on a bag. You’re not making a choice. The choice has been made for you, mama.

Now, I have way too many clothes. I know this. And I love my clothes dearly. It’s one of my favourite ways to express my personality, my taste, and—in some cases—my values. I prefer smaller, independent labels that use more sustainable and equitable practices, and wearing those clothes makes me feel like a better person than wearing my clothes from Target does. And using myself as an example illuminates the fact that self-expression is rarely the only goal when it comes to one’s appearance. We also want to signal what group(s) we belong to. Even the people who want to tell the world that they take themselves too seriously to care what they put on their back are likely using some external marker to signify their self-seriousness to their intended audiences. I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance.

With the Wirkin, and with any “actually good quality” dupe, people are trying to signal something specific. Maybe they want Birkin owners to “stay mad” that they got such a good dupe. Maybe they want to feel like a savvy shopper. But the most passionate defenders that I’m seeing really want to signal that they belong. They are stylish, they care the exact right amount about their appearance, and they get it. Telling these people that, actually, the girlies who got their bag by being on the Hermès list can clock that their fake quite easily, is telling them that they can’t belong. That the group they aspire to does not accept them. That, the truth of the matter is, they likely won’t be in the same room as these girls to even try to fool them with their dupe. The Birkin owners who are “mad” aren’t the ones who got their bags by being on the list. They’re the ones who finessed or fought their way into Birkin ownership. The ones whose status feels threatened by an $80 “Birkin” because their status is wobbly in the first place.

All of this is really difficult to hear, especially when part of your self-conception is that you do not suffer from class envy because, again, class is supposed to be invisible in America. So, instead, people are lashing out at anyone who brings class analysis into the dupe conversation.3 They will defend their sense of entitlement until their thumbs fall off, dressing it up in class warrior language.

And I say ‘entitlement’ very specifically. It is not your right to have an expensive, exclusive, or trendy item. You do not need them to survive, not even in a consumerist society like ours. You just want them. I know; I want them too. Some of them I can afford, some of them I can fancy layaway my way into believing I can afford, and most of them I cannot afford. But I don’t need them. Spend your money and your energy however you want, but know that these things—whether they’re purses that cost $80 or $8,000—are privileges and luxuries, not necessities.