The art of the knock-off...

Now, here's a little lovely that has been floating around the internets for a while; Alpha 60's awesome River Phoenix t-shirt. Its a steep £55 on ASOS, and perpetually sold out. Money limitations and the elusive nature of the t-shirt have prevented me from making it mine, but I couldn't help but dip my toe in the sometimes murky waters of eBay to see if they had a similar t-shirt. They did, of course; with the same cool-as-all-hell image from Stand By Me with a young River, fag in hand.

Alpha 60's:


Most of them were going for about £11, plus postage from Japan, and I've got to say, I'm a little tempted. Not for a second do I think it would have the lovely hang and quality of its designer doppelganger, but in truth its probably not something I would wear that often anyway, and as much as I love it now I can see me being fickle and getting over it pretty quickly (unlike my stance on River himself I hasten to add!).

An eBay offering...



Anyway, what do you guys reckon? Are knock-offs ever acceptable? In this case, I'm inclined to say yes...

This is my last guest blog post - I've had a blast and I'm quite sad to hand Curve in the Mode back to its rightful owner! Thanks for having me though! If you want to keep reading my musings, in a shortened form, feel free to follow me on Twitter, I'm @bethevs.

I should coco

Another fab or frugal comparison for you here, in the shape of the much-coveted Alexander Wang Coco Duffel bag. I've loved this long time, but even in the sale the grand price tag knocked it clear out of my budget.
But hark, a few dopelgangers have cropped up and they're pretty impressive... in the so-close-it-must-be-criminal corner is this baby from the ever-reliable Lush

The quality of this pic isn't great, so head over to shoplush.com for the original. It's still not cheap, but real leather for around £100 isn't bad. A pretty impressive knock-off if you ask me!
And if you'd rather pay homage than sport a tote-al rip-off (getit?) ASOS has jumped on the studded bandwagon.

This baby's also in the sale - a snip at £22 - and is more like the dove grey verison of the Wang, which would be much better for the summer, but is not quite as rock and roll. (Also available in nude).

There are also some dodgy replicas on ioffer, but I didn't tell you that...