Counterfeit eyewear used to be easy to spot from across a room. It is not any more. Packaging is reproduced convincingly, logos are laser-etched rather than printed, and the obvious tells that circulated ten years ago will now clear a good fake and occasionally fail a genuine pair.
So the honest version of this checklist starts somewhere other than the frame.
The check that actually settles it
Buy from a stockist the brand itself lists. Ray-Ban, for instance, publishes its own store locator; search your area on ray-ban.com and see whether the seller appears. A retailer that is not on the brand’s own list is not authorised, whatever the website says about being an official dealer.
This is the only check that does not depend on your ability to out-inspect a professional counterfeiter, and it is the one worth doing first. Everything below is secondary.
Signals in how it is sold
- A price well below the going rate. Authorised stock is bought through the brand’s local distribution, which puts a floor under what it can sell for. A current model at a fraction of the usual price is telling you something about its source.
- Stock that never runs out. Genuine ranges have colourways that sell through and models that get discontinued. A seller with unlimited quantities of every popular model is not working from real distribution.
- No physical trace. No listed address, no landline, no returns process, and contact only through a messaging app.
- Photographs lifted from the brand. Campaign images with no actual photographs of the stock in hand.
Signals on the frame itself
Treat these as supporting evidence rather than proof. A good fake can pass several of them.
- The model code. Genuine frames carry a model number, a colourway code and a lens width printed on the inside of a temple arm, in a consistent format for that brand. Search that code. If it returns nothing, or returns a completely different frame, that is worth pausing over.
- Finish quality. Rough edges where the temple meets the hinge, uneven paint inside the rim, or a slightly gritty hinge action. Manufacturing tolerances are where cost gets cut, because they are expensive to fake properly.
- Weight and balance. Acetate has a density that thin injection-moulded plastic does not. A frame that feels lighter than it looks is worth a second thought.
- Lens clarity. Look through the lens at a straight line, such as a door frame, and move your head slowly. Distortion or a wobble in the line suggests poor optical quality.
What is not reliable any more
The etched logo on the lens, the presence of a case, the printing on the box and the little paper booklet inside it are all reproduced routinely. Their presence proves nothing. Their absence is a warning, but their presence is not a clearance.
Why it matters beyond the badge
The cosmetic argument is the least of it. A counterfeit is built to look right in a photograph, and the ultraviolet filtering is the cheapest thing to leave out because nobody can see whether it is there. A dark lens with no ultraviolet filter opens your pupil and lets more ultraviolet through than bare eyes would. You are not paying less for the same thing; you are paying for a tinted lens with the protective part removed.
