RESPECT are so DISrespectful!
Offer excludes Vivienne Westwood shoes, alright!
“Respect” is the name of the store in Brunswick street that is selling the fake Melissas. I’ve heard from a lovely lass who is afraid she may have purchased some fakes off eBay, so I’ll list some more points to look for and some pictures.
First, the box issue. Here are some pictures of the authentic boxes and tags:
The authentic box is pull out, with a hole and metal ring to open it, and the sticker on the side gives a full description of the shoe and a drawn image (this is the box of the same style of shoe but the ‘Orb’ version). The tags are written in whatever it is that Brazilian people speak, and then English, is in two parts, and attached to the shoe via the gold ball-chain.
On the back of the tags is (I think) the style code, and what month and year it’s from.
Next, the sole of the shoes. Here is a picture of my own pair of VW Hearts, followed by a picture of my VW Orbs, and then the inside ‘sock’ of the Orbs, being the black colour. The sock on the fakes wasn’t all that different to the authentics, but another style had a full on different sock and tht peeved me.
When I went into the Respect store, I noticed another thing – the studs on the heel strap of the shoe are a cone shape and come to a dull point. The authentic shoes have flat disc type studs with only a slight round front.
Melissa shoes have a very distinctive smell, kind of like a raw bubblegum. My entire room smells of this now, due to having owned 15 pairs thus far, so I decided to take a whiff of the fakes. They have actually attempted to copy the scent! But they failed. The fakes smell sweeter than the authentics, and they kind of have a more banana lolly smell to them as opposed to the strong Hubba Bubba Original bubblegum.
Another thing to note is that on the bottom of the shoes they don’t have ‘Melissa’ stamped under the raised part. Another thing is that they only had two sizes stamped onto the underneath, the US size and the Euro size. Melissa shoes are made in BRAZIL and would therefore have the ‘BRA’ size as well!!
I hope this is a help! Feel free to ask me any more questions!
xx