Comes another rant but i have so much to say will try to keep it dense - Young people these days are more open, some even embrace the idea of wearing fakes as a counter culture or social statement on social classicism and profit driven companies (LVMH, Richmont etc.)

Politics and all that side, consumers these days have a lot more information available to them than consumers before who relied on marketing - ie they believe a product is of good quality because they were told it is. People these days can figure out how much a worker is paid for making a product (Hermes “artisan” starting paid is 1,700 euros a month, which is minimum wage in France), and can then judge a product not just based on marketing but the whole production and supply chain, and make a better and more rational judgement than any consumers before. I am circling back to the plethora of information because I do think this is is a huge deal and a big game changer. It’s not just the information itself but how it is presented. You have shoemakers/ cobblers on YouTube taking apart boots layer by layer to show you how off the shelve shoes are made and also do numerous tests on camera to show you the quality of the product and then comparing that to others etc. This was unheard of 2 decades ago.

But let’s go back to watches. I think the abundance of information on profit margins and labor/ material costs is important because it opens up a window for consumers to realize how overpriced most if not all luxury goods inherently are. This inherently pushes back on the narrative that “I can afford excellence” into “I overpaid for a decent product” and thus goes back to the rep vs gen argument brought up by OP. While in older days people would refuse reps because of their consumer consciousness but because now all this shit is public info, people are more open to the idea of buying fakes because to them, “I am smarter with paying a fraction for something that appears identical.” I am not saying reps can replace gens, no, gens are gens. But I rant about this because that abundance of info is driving more people towards reps. Again my bad about the rant but I think there’s a lot going on these days on the internet and for better or worse, it’s shifting the consumer mindset.