So I have been a long time lover of all things SPELL so when I went to the car boot this morning and spotted a Spell style dress I was dying. The woman who was selling it said she bought it and didn't fit, I asked her where she got it from as it seemed like a cheap style dress and she just said the internet. So off I got with my magical dress, I get home, try it on and it is just perfect. I don't half love car boot sales I tell you. 

But I was a bit curious about where she had bought it from so I googled the obvious ' Buy fake Spell' nothing much came up except something circa 2013 from Spell on their facebook talking about cheap knockoffs and how Spell as a brand are sustainable and these brands copying Spell is unethical and how they don't condone anything like that. Now Spell prices are pretty mental but I get where they're coming from as they work with fair trade companies, hand print their fabric and the prices of their clothing reflect this. So still wanting to know where the dress that I had bought came from, the only places I could think that would sell stuff like rip offs is Choies and Romwe. I've never shopped at either site but see lots of youtubers doing collabs with them so I had a look online. First page of maxi dresses... and there is my pretty dress. Dammit! Then scrolling through their site I found you can shop other SPELL rip offs and a lot of Free People too. They even use all their stock pictrues from the respective websites! One dress from Spell didn't even have any pictures of the actual Romwe/Choies dress they were selling just the Spell site ones so I feel like that is so misleading when the person purchasing it may not realise these are basically stolen pictures and not of the actual garment they will receive. 

Now the dress I bought this morning from the car boot sale is made of cheap chiffon/polyester material when I'm pretty sure the Spell one is cotton so that makes the dress feel cheap and generally it's just not the most quality item. I have many pieces from Spell and they are all gorgeous so if I bought one off Romwe/Choies thinking I'd be getting the same quality you'd be dead wrong. It's such a shame as independant shops like Spell put the work in and then a bigger cheaper Chinese company just rips them off for about a 10th of the price! 

It's made me feel a little worse about my magical car boot sale dress now, but at least I know I'm not buying directly from their site and I will still love and wear it but in the end, would I rather have a real Spell maxi? Of course, but it's a bit out of my budget unless they have a sale on! But even though some brands that are amazing are higher priced, you have to ask yourself at what cost are these cheap mass produced items made and is it worth it ethically to go for the lower price choice. It's just the world we live in today I suppose.

Below is a picture of the dress I bought this morning, still beautiful but that's only through the hard work Spell put in to make the original which is what I appreciate most about it I suppose. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Love Lucie xx