Customization and the Fight Against Counterfeiting

When Jean-Paul Sartre formulated the idea that “existence precedes essence” (l’existence précède l’essence) all those years ago, could he have foreseen that it would one day feature in a piece about luxury brands?

The connection between luxury brands and existentialism went unnoticed for many years. The reason is probably that seeing the Chanel Hula Hoop bag designed by Karl Lagerfeld on Kris Jenner’s arm does not bring Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” to mind. Yet the irony of it is plain, in the essence of these brands — an essence that corresponds to a priceless value arising from their sheer existence, through their own stories, the singular experience they create and the legacy they have left across their history.

Why Customization Came Into Play

The concept of brand value may exist in perpetuity, but a further factor has been added to the protection of that essence — one most of us recognise and have taken part in ourselves: customization.

Although the first thing customization appears to offer is a powerful means of communication available to everyone, there is a strategic effect behind it that runs from sustainability all the way to the fight against counterfeits.

The Scale of Counterfeiting

Counterfeit goods are diversifying worldwide by the day. According to global figures published in 2025 by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (“EUIPO”) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”), the share of counterfeit goods in global trade in 2021 was calculated at approximately 467 billion dollars. These figures span every sector on a broad scale — clothing, accessories, technology, toys, footwear, watches, cosmetics, eyewear and, most alarmingly, pharmaceuticals. Against such counterfeits, brands actively use the mechanisms afforded by intellectual property protection, working with specialists in every jurisdiction; but in a developing world, alternative brand strategies inevitably emerge. One of these goes beyond protecting brand value and the ideas at the heart of designs, to a dimension in which that singular protection is reinforced in collaboration with consumers’ own perspectives and experiences.

Demand for goods customized by users is also rising. According to 2025 statistics from the research company Statista on generational tendencies in giving or receiving personalised gifts in the United States, 51% of Generation Z buy or expect personalised gifts, with Millennials following at 46%.

Barcodes and serial numbers on genuine goods are no longer sufficient in the fight against counterfeits, since even these can be reproduced on fakes. Customization therefore becomes an effective mechanism, both through the singular experience and long-term investment quality it offers the consumer, and through its capacity to distinguish the genuine article from imitations.

On how a proprietor maintains control over quality and image through licensing: Copad v. Dior.

Singular Experience and Brand Value

The element of “a singular experience and feeling” that distinguishes luxury brands from all others, and that forms one of their primary aims, is strengthened further by the customization made available to consumers. When users can customize a product, that singular experience continues not only at the moment of purchase but also at the moment of customization and throughout the lifetime of use. The most visible reason for rising demand is that, in a far more complex world and an order of relationships in which everyone has less time, one of the most effective means of communication is the first impression created. Beyond the clothes and bags people choose, the customization of all these items now allows people to communicate with the outside world in a more specific register and to present themselves. In a period when criticism that almost everyone wears the same “thing” and looks the same is growing, customization stands out all the more as an element of communication.

In the same direction, data from the world’s leading luxury lifestyle and fashion houses indicate that goods resulting from customization are treated by users as timeless investments. The effect of this for intellectual property — and, at a certain point, for human psychology — is that, faced with consumers’ strong desire to own customized goods, there is no corresponding tendency to customize counterfeits. Although the counterfeit market can be observed as a fact of the world within a supply-and-demand cycle up to a point, when it comes to customization, counterfeits neither offer users that possibility nor attract any consumer tendency towards personalisation. This takes on all the more meaning against a brand value built on delivering a singular experience.

On the origins of this understanding of experience: Architects of the Industry #1: Le Bon Marché.

Nike, one of the first brands to offer personalised products, allowed consumers to design their own item through a service on its official website — from the colour of each panel to the lettering — for certain shoe models. Consumers could thereby customize their own genuine Nike shoes according to their taste, and even to memories meaningful to them, turning them into pieces worn for a lifetime or kept for future generations. Closer to the present, examples such as Nomination bracelets, Golden Goose shoe workshops, lettering on Nespresso flasks, hot-stamped initials on Louis Vuitton lipstick cases and Misela bags have multiplied. The intangible possibility customization offers carries a value that counterfeits can never match under any circumstances. In essence, it emphasises the value of human existence in an increasingly crowded world. Against mass production, which has developed through many technological possibilities and has by now become generic — where even the rarest designer ideas can become the subject of mass-produced counterfeits — finding, and being able to create, what is “only yours” in all the world is an outcome that can be neither replicated nor approximated. Here the stories and legacies at the heart of these brands combine with users’ own stories, particular to their lives and tastes. As a result, the customization service directs the demand cycle back to the genuine brands.

Traceability and Sustainability

Beyond its intangible value, customization provides traceability for genuine goods. Items resulting from a brand’s customization service are developed in line with that brand’s existing characteristics, and thereby serve to reveal their authentic origin even on the second-hand market. Beyond goods that are entirely yours and reflect you, this produces goods whose genuine origin can be traced and identified exactly.

Another effect of this for brands concerns sustainability. Behind the goods and services offered by leading brands operating globally lies an obligation to operate in compliance with local and international regulation. That makes it unavoidable to work within an understanding of a greener world order — from packaging to delivery options — in which this historical legacy can be carried to future generations. Against the much-practised sales chain created when a conventional design piece finds its place on the second-hand market, the ability to customize entirely new designs likewise demonstrates long-term investment power. As new collections are produced, the possibility of personalising these items means they remain in users’ wardrobes for many years, and can give sustainability in fashion a new dimension. Moreover, the materials offered for customization are likewise created, within an environmentally conscious framework, from materials that are ready for use but have not found a place in any collection. Surplus fabrics, stones, sequins, prints and patterns can become valuable materials that house a user’s memories on the plane of design, and can offset the sustainability concerns the production cycle brings.

Conclusion

For all these innovations to continue, the most fundamental reality behind them must continue to be firmly protected. Whether a brand is long-established or belongs to the new age, the “brand value” built on its sheer existence expresses — as the name suggests — a value built through that brand’s past, its story, the experience it creates, its styling and the designer’s imagination. Against that reality and that foundation, the customization offered to users must of course have a limit. Where users are given unlimited scope to customize, the distinctiveness that makes a brand’s goods recognisable even by their stitching may in time risk dilution. The signature building blocks that constitute each brand’s identity therefore form the limit of customization. For example, if the iconic turquoise of Tiffany & Co. packaging, the indispensable leather flap of Longchamp’s Le Pliage bags or the screw motifs on Cartier Love bracelets were removed, the very identity that makes that brand legacy recognisable and distinctive would be eliminated. The most fundamental limit on customization is therefore the identity on which each brand rests. In the end, the existence that constitutes a brand’s identity and fragments of users’ own lives come together, and customized goods become the sole elements performing the function of indicating origin. These ideas are one of the real examples we live among in which existence comes before essence.

On how archive goods and second-hand sales are treated in trademark law: Revocation for Non-Use and the Testarossa Decision.