Is nothing sacred? Anya Hindmarch’s environmentally aware "I Am NOT a Plastic Bag" has been co-opted by counterfeiters – with fake versions selling for a little as 2 yuan in China!

What is the most wanted and the most counterfeited $15 bag in history? The eco-friendly shopping/grocery designer bag by Anya Hindmarch only sells for $15/£5. Created in August of last year, the I'm NOT a Plastic Bag  has been in such unprecedented demand that women have waited in long lines under pouring rain when a Whole Foods store in New York City was stocking them. Celebrities carry them around. They’re selling for hundreds online. And in Southeast Asia, sales in some stores have been cancelled for fear of customer safety.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for something this good to be counterfeited – and counterfeited it was. Knock-offs purporting to be the real thing and other versions bearing cute alternative phrases – including “I am a plastic bag AND I’m 100% recyclable” (a response from plastic bag manufacturers), “I am not plastic,” “Save a bag, save the world” – have sprouted up from eBay to Beijing.

According to sharp-eyed blogger Nina Ying in PN China Blog, she was skimming the official Web site of the state-owned People's Daily, China's largest daily newspaper, when she noticed a sentence in plain English, standing out in the all Chinese-language Web site. On a photo of a cloth bag, were the words "I'm not a plastic bag."

While there were plenty of pictures of obvious knock-offs to be seen in the Internet, they did not pass themselves off as anything but counterfeit. The bags in China, though, printed with “I'm NOT a Plastic Bag,” were being sold as genuine in a department store, under the very noses of the authorities, and even featured in a respectable newspaper. Moreover, the seller blithely states in the story that while the production cost for one such bag is 10 yuan, it was being sold for only 2 yuan to promote the eco-friendly (albeit counterfeit) bags to the buyers.

The font and the layout are slightly different and the quality of the bag of course is not comparable to the real "I'm NOT a Plastic Bag." But as the blogger points out, the real issue is this: It’s all righteous and trendy to replace plastic bags with cloth bags – but it is not legally required. On the other hand, doing it by breaking intellectual property laws is definitely illegal. Furthermore, who knows if this “cloth” bag is actually cloth?

How to tell the real "I'm NOT a Plastic Bag" from its counterfeit versions

Speaking of fake versus the real thing, too many fake “I'm NOT a Plastic Bags” have been showing up on the pages of e-Bay that the online auction site has posted guidelines to help consumers recognize the genuine designer bag.

The real “I'm NOT a Plastic Bag” is made of canvas, comes in five colors (brown, navy/blue, grey, green and lavender/purple), with each version differentiated by the color of cloth used to spell out “I’m NOT A Plastic bag” on the front of the bag. The bags have a foldable hard bottom made of cardboard or plastic material covered in canvas; have no zippers, buttons, inside or outside pockets; are embroidered with the AH (Anya Hindmarch) bow logo near the top front of the bag between the chrome rings for the handles; and printed with the “we are what we do” and “ANYA HINDMARCH LONDON” on each side of the inside flaps and the trim.

The counterfeit ones may have zippers and pockets, brass rings where the handles are attached to the bag ( the real ones have chrome rings) and letters that spell out “I’m NOT A Plastic bag” PRINTED instead of being DIE-CUT out of CLOTH and STITCHED on. Some contain the Anya Hindmarch bow logo that is much bigger than that on the real bag…a different type of apostrophe in the “I’m”… thicker fonts for “I’m NOT A Plastic bag.”  Look out for completely different fonts and sizes for the “we are what we do” printed on one of the inside flaps of the bag (the real thing is Helvetica Neue Std Bold)...and the dot in the letter “i” in “Plastic” connected to the long stroke of the “I” (in the authentic ones, the dot is a SEPARATE, DISTINCT piece stitched above but NOT CONNECTED). Remember, there are official guidelines to these logos.

According to Anya, “Our aim with this project has been to use our influence to make it fashionable not to use plastic bags. ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ was designed to be a stylish, practical, reusable bag that would raise awareness of this issue and spark debate. We feel that we have achieved this aim beyond our wildest dreams.”

But as we make a fashion statement and simultaneously promote eco-friendly shopping bags, it’s smart to remember not to break intellectual property laws in the process.