SO…. How do you determine authenticity of Sevens?!

The basics:

Before jumping to the finer points of eyeing the jeans, the following warning signs will help you even if you don’t have the eye for picking out the reals yet. I do recommend though that if you have the ability in your area, go to a store that carries Sevens and inspect the washes, distressing, and tags closely so that you get an idea of what you are trying to match!

1) Cut number – The cut number on Sevens is a batch number, like today’s batch might be numbered 723101, tomorrow’s 723102, etc. There are only a handful of jeans (maybe a few hundred) made with each cut number. When counterfeiters get ahold of a pair to fake, they will take a real cut number and produce mass quantities of their jeans with it. After all, they are trying to make cheap junk… keeping costs cheap means not wasting resources changing the cut numbers constantly! As a result, now the market starts to see floods of jeans with the same cut number. These are known as “common fake cut numbers.” When these are identified, they are posted to the following website maintained by a super-cool chick named Bianca, and hence often referred to here as “Bianca’s Site” – Keine Chance den Fakes! . Bookmark this page. This is your bible. It is in German, and you will need to translate it at babelfish.altavista.com or google translator if you want to read the text, but even without translating or speaking German you can scan the list of numbers there for the one on the pair you’re looking at. If it’s on there, there’s a 99.9% chance that it’s fake. There ARE real pairs with those numbers, but they are like needles in a haystack. There ARE fake pairs that do NOT have one of the numbers on the list, so just because it is not on there does not guarantee it is real, but this is still a great starting point.

- The other way to research the cut number is to do an eBay search for the number, check off to search by title and description, and see how many pop up. If more than 3 pairs come up with that cut number, it is a warning sign

- If a seller is selling multiples of the exact same pair, and all have the same cut number – warning sign

2) Item location

- Avoid items from sellers located in Turkey, China, Phillipines, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, any other obscure country. These are all counterfeiting hubs where there are no repercussions to this type of activity.


3) Seller Red Flags

- Seller is selling a ton of Sevens, especially hard to find ones, like for instance 30 pairs of various crystal styles

- Seller is selling many pairs of brand new with tags jeans at dirt cheap buy-it-nows. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it is. NWT jeans cannot be profited on at $40 a pop.

- Run a forum search for your potential seller’s ID. If any threads come up, read them… there are probably mentions of any major known fake seller, or any seller with a reputation for any other sketchy behavior, as well as known authentic sellers.



Seven authenticity

There are many features of Sevens that can be used to determine authenticity. The most telling characteristic is generally the tag, which is why savvy Seven Shoppers will ask for a photo of it when evaluating a pair. The fakers just never seem to get anywhere close to right on this, and there are a number of common mistakes.

-THE TAG FORMAT

On a real pair of Sevens, the tags come in the following order. There are a few variants to these:
Top: Small burgundy red tag with the size on it. Old pairs may NOT have this tag, and will have the size printed on the main white tag, or may also have a white size tag. Here is an example of an old pair with the original pocket lining logo too:


Middle: Yellow main tag with 7 For all Mankind logo, style number, fabric content, “Made in U.S.A. OF IMPORTED FABRIC”, CUT #, “SEE CARE ON REVERSE”. Older pairs will also say “By Jerome Dahan.”

OR - New for summer/fall 2007 brown main tag with white piping on the sides. Note that the font and printing are still IDENTICAL to the old tag, but the size tag is now WHITE and has a new font, the 3's on the new brown tag/white size tag combo are NOT FLAT AT THE TOP, they are now rounded.

OR - 2009 and up, the brown tag similar to above WILL NOT have the cut and style number on it. These numbers are now located on a small white satiny tag underneath.

OR - a white paper tag with this info, which may or may not have the R/N number printed on this side of the tag, and say “Made in U.S.A” instead of the above wording (Within the exact same style there may be some cuts produced with yellow tags, and some with white tags). Pairs made for the Canadian market will also have TWO large tags, either yellow or white, one in english, and one in French as seen here:
Heck, you may even run into this rare and cool Japanese tag!

Bottom: small yellow tag with 7FAM logo on front, and metallic looking security strip and etched serial numbers on the back. The security strip will reveal small black 7 For All Mankind logos printed throughout when viewed under magnification, or small red symbols on some newer pairs.

New Sevens also come with a white barcode sticker. This tag is located INSIDE the jeans on the left front inner waistband above the tags. It should not be on the outside waistband. It should not be on the thigh. This can of course be moved by a store or buyer, but if you see a seller with multiple pairs with misplaced stickers, stay away. The sticker should also have rounded corners, not squared ones.


FAKE TAG COMMON ERRORS

1) The cut and style numbers are stitched onto the tag like the rest of the printing

The cut and style numbers on a normal yellow tag are always PRINTED on the tag in an inked typeface. They are NEVER stitched.

EXAMPLE of fake:



Note that the cut and style are stitched on. Now compare to the real tag where they are printed, and thus in a much larger and smoother font:





2) The font is incorrect

This holds true for pretty much every fake I’ve ever seen. Some look really close, but none are all there. Errors can include being too bold, too widespread, uneven spacing. Pay close attention to the number 2’s, these are the most easy to see discrepancies in. Sevens 2’s are curved at the bottom right as they approach the base horizontal line. They are not sharply pointed in the corner, nor do the diagonal and horizontal portions meet at a very small angle.
Barcode sticker fonts are generally also incorrect on fakes. The easiest to identify is that the zeros should have slashes through them ( / ) . Any zero without a slash indicates a fake.



EXAMPLE of fake:



The first tag is a good example of bad font on both sticker and tag. Note no slashes through the zeros on the sticker. Note the deviant font on the tag, especially the 2’s (pointy on the lower left) and the 7 (too short on the top line). The second tag is overall totally incorrectly shaped font, and way too bold


COMPARE with reals:






Note here on the real tags the 2’s have a gentle curve.




If you are a size 30+, you have an added bonus font error ON OLD STYLE TAGS WITH THE RED SIZE TAG. The 3 on the size tag should have a FLAT top line, not rounded.


EXAMPLE OF 3 ERROR ON SIZE TAG






REAL 3 ON SIZE TAG




This 3 point does NOT APPLY to the new brown large tags which are paired with the new fonted white size tag. The 3 on the new white size tags IS NOT rounded.



FAKE WHITE TAGS

There are a few fakes of the white tag. These are so far easily identifiable, based on very poor font and overly glossy/flat, wrong material tag.

REAL:



FAKES:



REAL! But note that Seven doesn't always know how to spell apparently! (polyurEthane):






OTHER TIPS

Though the tag will be your best resource, especially until your eye is trained to what each wash should look like, for which Keine Chance den Fakes! will be your best resource, the following are often characteristics of fake:

POCKET LINING – The pocket lining is solid white on older pairs, and has subtle vertical striping on newer ones. Either way, the pocket lining should NOT be thin like tissue paper

RIVETS/BUTTONS – should be stamped with a 7 on the back. The rivets should never be raised/nippled or depressed on the inside surface, nor should the seven ever appear black/darkened.

HANGTAGS - Hangtags can sometimes be a big giveaway to a fake, however first realize that there are multiple types of real hangtags that have been used over the years. First is the standard hangtag. This tag consists of a thick lightly waxy paper, with subtle vertical corrugation, with the following front and back appearance:


The tag should not be heavily shiny, nor should it be matte, or flat without ridges, or thick and rigid looking like cardboard. Here are fake tags with a thick cardboardy look, and/or no corrugations (and a weird wrong looking string attacher on the last one):



There are 2 other variations on real tags. Here is one:



Note that this tag doesn’t have the 7 logo on the front side, and has NO writing on the back. This is off a pair of authentic US market Pink A’s, but also European market pairs (where they cannot use the names Seven or 7 due to legal issues) may use this tag.

Here is one other variant. This tag is a bit thicker and waxier, and has a full waxpaper-like back, with the writing on a sticker instead of directly on the tag. This is off a WDS Red A Capri:




There is also a special hangtag for Great China Wall pairs. This tag is a thick cardboardy type tag, with a yellow background and black writing. On one side is "7 For All Mankind" and on the other is "Great China Wall." This tag is ALWAYS attached with a RED plastic slide-lock loop. The attachment is NEVER any other color. Many fakes are using white ones.





A NOTE ABOUT EUROPEAN MARKET PAIRS - Some Sevens made for US sale, and ALL pairs made for the European market do NOT carry the word Seven or 7 anywhere on them due to legal issues. On these pairs you will find an inverted V known as the "pants logo" (looks like this - /\ ) on the back pocket red tag, inside yellow tag, back of rivets, and all rivets and the front of the button will read "for all mankind." These are not automatically fakes. These variants ARE now faked too though.

REAL EURO TAG: Pants logo on back waistband tag:


OTHER IMPORTANT POINTS: Remember that Seven For All Mankind is NOT the same company or designers or affiliated in any way with Seven7. They do bear some similar markings and the obviously confusing name, which has resulted in much legal turmoil between the two.

Seven7's are sold at Lane Bryant and Express among a few other locations, at much lower retail prices than 7FAM. 7FAM is sold at Nordstrom, Saks, Neimans, etc. for well over $100 (above $200 for the more ornate styles). A seller can say "Authentic Seven7" and be telling the absolute truth in their listing, but they AREN'T authentic 7FAM. Similarly, many sellers WILL claim that the item is 7FAM when it is really Seven7. Learn the ropes of Seven (tags, logos, etc) and you will not fall into this trap.






All text copyright of Idalis