Defunkd

[etallicx]

Hey guys
I have been looking to purchase a kanye west college dropout truth tour 2004 shirt but am quite conflicted on what is real and what is fake. I saw a post recently of someone asking whether their shirt was fake due to the tag, someone had pointed out that the tag didn't align with the supposed real gilden tag. I am seeing many tees with a very similar gilden tag that are supposedly authentic but do not match the "genuine" tag mentioned on the gilden tag guides. Below I have shown the images of the supposed real tags on sale on ebay etc, they are all very similar but is not authentic given the gilden tag guide.

If anyone could help id be greatly appreciated

[jimmyj]

Thanks for posting, have been meaning to do a deepdive into this. And now that these are in the vintage era, good timing. Just recently a user on IG, whose username escapes me at the moment, sent me the following photos of Anvil tags, from Kanye tees that also appear to be bogus. And we discussed how these fake tags seemed to be exclusively used on counterfeit Kanye tees - and didn't come from the usual Thailand sources. But it's all just a theory.

With the three photos you included - they were all on Kayne tees?

[etallicx]

Hi Jimmy,
The images were all photos of tags on the college dropout tee. A couple on eBay, another on a reselling site that supposedly sells and authenticates originals.

Here are the links for the tags as shown in the images:


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/396174390159 ... p_homepage

https://justinreed.com/products/vintage ... gFUl3KXAeK


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/145310947387 ... media=COPY

They all seem to have the same I and L letter misalignment, as well as a bumped up U and a not so filled out 'activewear'
Let me know what you think

[jimmyj]

So yeah, we made notes about this tag here:

https://www.defunkd.com/fake-tag-archive/#gildan-1

All of the tags you posted share the same issues. Big space between the A and C, not to mention the font in that box is different than the one we compared to.

The U is bumped up and not on the same baseline.

Even the G is off, and missing a part.

And they all share the Haiti manufacture as a common thread.

I'm pretty sure I did this previously, and was only able to find these Gildan tags on Kanye shirts, but let's flush this out. Dig around on eBay, and search for any shirt from the 2000s era, with a Gildan Ultra Cotton Heavyweight tag - see if you can find the the tag with the issues described above, but on a shirt that isn't Kayne.

What's the site that authenticates them?

[etallicx]

Hi Jimmy,
I digged around and found quite a few tees with the Gildan Ultra Cotton Heavyweight tag from the same era, but they look nothing like the ones on the kanye tees. Take a look at the screenshots below and let me know what you think.

[jimmyj]

Yeah, I had the same results. That particular Gildan tag seems to be exclusive to that fake Kanye tee, I haven't actually seen it on any other counterfeits. So I would not trust any of them with that tag, with those oddities.

See if you can find Haiti ones.

Now doing the reverse and I see two shirts with a Honduras Gildan tag.

I figured the true ones would have a Kanye tag with a Bear on it? Seems like there's some with AAA tags that have sold for quite a bit. Was there an initial round of bootlegs/parking lot tees made on true Gildan tags sold, and then a second generation of bootlegs happened with fake Gildan tags? This whole thing is bizarre, but the clearly fake Gildan tag is outs a significant segment of the fake College tees.

This is going the way of Westwood seds tees where no one really knows which was is the OG lol.

Which site has one listed as authentic?

[etallicx]

Very strange indeed, seems to be just exclusively to that Kanye tee. I have found other tees (same design) with the authentic tag mentioned on the guides. I believe they also did a run of shirts with the bear logo on it, but was not sold at the concerts where the gilden tags are usually found. Same with the AAA tags, they seem to be from the concerts.

The site with the guaranteed authenticity was justinreed.com which seems to be a designer reseller, I have tagged a screenshot of their authenticity guarantee. Has the same tag as all the other 'fake' ones.

[jimmyj]

Ahhh yes, I have reached out to them before, privately, via email about another shirt, and never heard back. Others have pointed out items - like an Ozzy Tattoo shirt they had listed at some point, I'll try them again.

Grailed is particularly bad with their authenticity verification.