Product authenticity in fashion: what actually stops a fake
Vendor pitches sell tags and apps, and headline statistics sell alarm; neither connects the counterfeit data, resale-authentication failures and the ESPR textile timeline into what a brand's per-item check actually has to do.
| MEASURE | FIGURE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|
| Clothing share of counterfeit goods seized, 2020-2021 | 21.6% | OECD/EUIPO 2025 |
| Footwear share of counterfeit goods seized, 2020-2021 | 21.4% | OECD/EUIPO 2025 |
| Counterfeit items detained by EU authorities, 2024 | 112 million | Commission/EUIPO |
| Estimated retail value of those 2024 detentions | €3.8 billion | Commission/EUIPO |
Where the fakes concentrate
Ask where fashion counterfeits actually turn up, and the answer is not a marginal corner of the fake-goods trade. It is close to the center of it. OECD and EUIPO's Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025 report found that clothing accounted for 21.6% and footwear for 21.4% of counterfeit goods seized worldwide in 2020-2021.
In 2024, EU authorities detained 112 million counterfeit items with an estimated retail value of €3.8 billion across the internal market and EU borders.
And enforcement keeps finding fashion goods at scale: an OLAF-led operation reported on 2 May 2025 that it had seized more than 1.8 million counterfeit fashion items valued over €180 million across Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy. None of this is a footnote a brand can wait out. It is the baseline a per-item check has to work against.
The buyer rarely checks, and often cannot
Fashion is also where buyers are least equipped to protect themselves, and least inclined to try. EUIPO's 2022 Youth Scoreboard found that 37% of EU residents aged 15-24 had intentionally bought a counterfeit product in the prior 12 months. In the same survey, clothes and accessories were the most common category of counterfeit those young buyers intentionally bought, ahead of footwear and electronics.
Buying knowingly is only half the picture. A separate 2023 EUIPO perception study found that 15% of Europeans report having bought a counterfeit product unintentionally, after being misled.
Put those together and an authenticity check cannot assume an expert, a suspicious buyer, or even an interested one. It has to work for someone with no training and no reason to look closely, the point we make at length in The hologram problem: a feature only protects the person who can actually check it.
A verdict after the fact is not the same as an identity
Resale platforms built entire businesses on catching what brands did not stop at the point of sale, and their own numbers show the scale of that catch. As of November 2022, Vestiaire Collective reported that its authenticators had rejected items worth €360 million since 2020, a figure the platform published itself.
Marketplaces get it wrong in both directions, too. A federal court granted Nike partial summary judgment, finding StockX liable for selling at least 37 pairs of counterfeit Nike sneakers that its own authentication process had examined and passed, in a ruling issued in March 2025. Device-based checks are not immune either: Entrupy's device-based authentication returned an inconclusive verdict on a bag a reviewer says was bought directly from an Hermès store, according to a review posted on Trustpilot.
Read together, the pattern is the same across all three: a verdict rendered by someone else, after the sale, on a single item, that the buyer holding it cannot audit. We look at what resale authentication can and cannot promise in The resale test. What a brand-issued identity offers instead is not a better verdict. It is a record made at the moment of manufacture, checkable by the buyer directly, rather than a judgment call made later by someone with no stake in getting it right.
What the law actually gives a brand
None of this leaves a brand without tools; it just means the tools sit further from the point of sale than most people assume. A brand or its licensee can apply to customs authorities to have suspected counterfeit goods entering the EU detained.REG. (EU) 608/2013, ART. 3 Once the rights holder confirms in writing, within 10 working days, that the goods infringe, customs can destroy them without a court ruling.REG. (EU) 608/2013, ART. 23(1) For small postal or courier consignments of three units or fewer, customs can destroy the goods without case-by-case confirmation from the rights holder, provided a general request is already on file.REG. (EU) 608/2013, ART. 26
Online marketplaces must obtain and hold a trader's name, address and contact details before letting that trader sell to EU consumers.REG. (EU) 2022/2065, ART. 30(1) Textile products must carry a label or mark indicating fibre composition whenever they are made available on the market.REG. (EU) 1007/2011, ART. 14(1) Commission Recommendation (EU) 2024/915 of 19 March 2024 encourages rights holders and online marketplaces to adopt EU-wide advanced tracing systems to combat counterfeiting.
Every one of these levers acts on a shipment, a seller or a label. Customs can stop a container at the border. A marketplace can be made to identify who is selling through it. A label can be required to state fibre content. None of them tells the person holding a finished garment whether the garment itself is genuine.
The textile passport will carry data, not proof
A digital product passport is coming for textiles, but it is worth being precise about what it will and will not do. Under the ESPR, a digital product passport is required only once a product-specific delegated act sets that requirement for a product group.REG. (EU) 2024/1781, ART. 9(1)
The Commission's ESPR working plan, adopted 16 April 2025, names textiles, with a focus on apparel, among the first priority product groups for ecodesign delegated acts. That same 16 April 2025 working plan, COM(2025) 187 final, gives 2027 as the indicative year for the textile ecodesign delegated act to be adopted.
Even once that act lands, the passport it creates is a data carrier: durability, recyclability, fibre content, supply-chain information, structured and machine-readable. It is not, on its own, a way for a shopper to tell a genuine garment from a copy of one; nothing in the requirement ties the record to a specific physical item in a way a buyer can check unaided.
What a per-item check actually needs to do does not wait for that delegated act. It is one identity per item, issued by the brand at the point of manufacture, checkable by whoever is holding the garment, before they buy it and again if it changes hands, without an app, an account, or a login. It answers with a signed record the brand stands behind, not a verdict rendered by a third party after the fact, and it does not need a blockchain to do it. We build that layer as the base of SAGAS Commerce.
General information, not legal advice. Verify obligations against the cited regulations on EUR-Lex, or with counsel. Citations checked September 4, 2026.