10 steps to check the authenticity of your pre-loved, vintage or brand-new Lady Dior handbag
how to spot a fake Lady Dior bag
with a few handy tips.
To begin with, it is worth bearing in mind that the Lady Dior has been around since 1994, so there have been multiple different incarnations of the bag and various styles, colours, shapes as well as materials and thus it is very difficult to tell, purely based on style and colour alone, whether or not the bag is real.
Among the numerous variations there is a little mini Lady Dior with a flap on the top, there are also supple Lady Diors that have a completely different soft structure, yet there’s also the My ABC Dior that has a strap with badges on and, again, has a flap on the top, and all of them have their own sizing.
What we’d recommend you start with, when it comes to your coveted bag, is its shape, pattern symmetry as well as stitches.
1 The Shape
Fake bags usually fail to boast of the originally beautiful crisp shape - they often bulge. That’s why even if you buy a heavily used Lady Dior, it should still preserve its robust shape and stand firmly on its feet despite being many years old, and that’s the detail you also ought to pay attention to.
Another crucial detail is the cushions - with three of them on the mini Lady Dior, five as you go across on its medium counterpart and seven on the large model.
Now pay your attention to the symmetry of these cushions. The central row should be located precisely in the center. Any minimum displacement of the pattern in any direction is unacceptable.
Pay attention to how the pattern ends at the seam. If you see that the pattern on the left side of the bag ends with an unfinished cushion by about 4 mm, then exactly the same 4 mm will be missing on the right side. Rotate the bag and check the sides. At the base, there will be an odd number of cushions and the same perfect symmetry.
2 The Material
You can get Lady Diors made out of all kinds of different leathers and materials. The softness of lamb skin is absolutely supreme. Due to the fact that lamb skin is also very often used in fakes, it is very hard to tell them apart based on lamb skin alone.
That is why using leather as a guide is not your best bet. Instead, pay close attention to the stitching of a bag. On fakes, it can either contrast or be very poorly done.
3 The Seams, Threads and Stitches
The most important rule for all classic models concerns the stitching that is designed to be the exact same colour as the leather of the bag. On fakes, nobody pays attention to the colours of the thread.
It should be absolutely the same as the colour (blue on blue or burgundy on red and so on) of the leather. Consider it as a red flag if you see the difference in the colour of the bags offered on various websites. The exceptions are the limited models of the Lady Dior, where they specifically wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of the cannage pattern and highlight it with contrasting dense threads.
The stitches should all be the same and the distance between them is also the same. Run your hand over the bag. It should not feel like you have run your hand over the strings. The threads ought to be soft like the leather itself. On fakes, they can use a coarse synthetic thread instead.
4 The Handles
As you understand, handles are one of the main indicators of authenticity, but remember that all aspects must be taken into account.
The handles of the original Lady Dior bag are rounded on the outside and perfectly smooth on the inside. The width of a handle at the wide base is approximately 0.8-0.9 mm narrowed to the seam by approximately two millimeters.
Look at the facial seams on the outside of the handle. The seam is located at an ideal distance from the edge throughout the whole length. The spacing between stitches is the same. The purl seam on the smooth side of the handle will not help us to determine our bag’s originality, so don't look at it. However, a very important point is that the handles in the open position never fall apart and do not touch the walls of the bag itself. They remain fixed at the same angle of about 45 degrees thus forming the two letters of the CD logo when looking at the bag from above.
What holds the handles in this position is the mechanism of attaching the handles to the bag with two rings. On the inside, all four fixing rings have small hidden holes. By pressing something sharp into this hole, you can unfasten the handles from the bag. The rings will open on their own. This is necessary for cleaning, replacing handles, etc. Fakes have no such mechanism.
The most important thing you ought to verify is how its handles move to the right and to the left. The movement is quite tough in new bags due to the mechanism which holds the handles attached to the bag.
An exception may be vintage handbags. After many years of wear, the mechanism that keeps the movement of the handles to the right and to the left is loosened and they become dangly as a result. When a bag is new, it is difficult to move the handles to the right or to the left, but in the fake bags they dangle to the right and to the left, producing an unpleasant sound.
Please note that on the inside of the ring-attachment to the bag there are always two straight flat slots seams real screws located symmetrically on the same line. As a matter of fact, they are not real screws, but they are just engraved into the metal.
5 The Feet
6 The Charm
The charm is attached to the handle and the bag with a tight ring. This ring prevents the charm from moving. With the application of force, it can be shifted to the right or left. The letter O of the charm is supposed to sit on a little bit of lamb skin of its own, but if you look at the side, you will see that the letters are attached by means of little figures of eight - not a simple loop - for each individual letter of the charm.
The reason why these figures of eight are used is that they stop the charm from wiggling around and they allow it to lie flat. It doesn’t mean that the charm doesn’t move at all, but it doesn’t move all over the place like on poorly made fakes.
The other feature of the charm worth bearing in mind is on the back of the little piece of leather behind the O. It just says Christian Dior on the back of the plate, and not Christian Dior Paris or Christian Dior made in France.
As it was previously mentioned, the Lady Dior bag has been made since 1994, and Christian Dior stopped making handbags in France in 1990. So if it says “made in France”, it’s worth checking your bag’s authenticity. The fact is that the bags are usually made in Italy with a couple of them occasionally made in Spain. All inscriptions on the label, number, and the inscription on the back of the leather part “O” are made in the colour of the hardware.
7 The Zip
The main zipper’s puller will have four chain-links attached to it, a tiny one followed by three bigger rings, with a rounded zipper pull attached to the final ring. This oval zipper pull should feel hefty in your hand and have “CD” stamped into it.
The opening to the Mini Lady Dior is different because it is one of the flat bags with hardware attached to the inside but with no zip, yet with a piece of leather that looks like a “tongue” and serves as a closure of the bag. The “tongue” as well as the edges of the bag have two layers of leather stitched together, which gives the bag its lovely structure.
On fakes, however, you will see that instead if these two layers they actually have one piece of leather that goes up and then folds over and goes inside.
Dior's original fittings are very weighty. The charm on the lock is quite heavy. The edges of the charm are not smooth, but textured and minted. Examine the zip very carefully too. If you look closely, you will notice, in the middle on its horizontal part, the letter S* (not on all bags, though), but looking at its reverse side you will see the engraving of Cristian Dior. This indicates the use of expensive branded hardware.
8 The Strap
All bags come with a crossbody strap with a buckle on either side of it. There is a little CD on the side of each buckle. On either end of the strap there is a clasp attached.
Sometimes the strap has a chain element to it which comes in noble golden coating attached to the O-shaped plates with engraved screws on them. The clasps do not rotate 360 degrees, as they do on cheap fakes, but have a small amplitude of rotation to the right and left. The correct fixation of the strap is on the outside of the diagonally opposite handles. With this type of fastening, the handles will always be in the raised state, and the handbag will fit comfortably to the body.
9 The Inside
The unofficial rule with the Lady Dior is that the outside colour of the bag should really match the inside. However, it’s not always the case, particularly when it comes to black bags whose inside may be red sometimes. That’s why the matching colour rule is not something to look out for if you need to tell an authentic bag from a counterfeited one.
There are only two features on the inside to note: the cannage pattern on the fabric inside as well as the two CD letters in the central part if you look carefully enough. Dior uses a dense jacquard with a cannage pattern. Check its quality in the pocket as well.
The lining should fit snugly against the inner walls of the bag without forming unnecessary overhangs. Real Lady Dior bags may have cannage or Dior jacquard pattern on the lining; although Cannage patterned lining is more common. Some Lady Dior bags have plain leather or suede lining. Most fakes don’t have cannage pattern since they usually use the monogram oblique pattern with Dior written all over it.
10 The Label and the Date code
Inside of the Lady Dior bag, there is a little leather tab that says “Christian Dior Paris” or “Christian Dior Paris Made in Italy”. Until the year 2020, all labels were sewn onto the bag with one top seam. On the back of the label there is a secret code consisting of two digits then two capital letters and four digits.
The letters indicate the place of production, but the place of production can only be verified at a Dior boutique. The four digits indicate the date of production of the bag first and third digits tell us the month of production, while the second and fourth digits indicate the year of production.
During the last two years, the internal tags of Lady Dior have changed. The tag is completely sewn on all the four sides of the lining, but the inscriptions “Christian Dior Paris” or “Christian Dior Paris made in Italy” which are made in the colour of the accessories, still remain on it. But the secret code of eight characters was placed on a rectangular leather tongue with rounded edges, usually in a seam in a pocket, and the code itself was embossed on the leather.
Now that you are fully equipped with all the necessary know-how, we believe that your next purchase will bring you not only satisfaction with your authentic bag but also the joy of possessing a valuable accessory that will serve you a lifetime - all that guaranteed if you buy your bag with us.