Identifying An Original Monogram Louis Vuitton Bag

Hello everyone,
This is our first blog post and we thought we’d delve right into the fun and fabulous world of purchasing designer items by showing you how to identify an original Louis Vuitton (LV) bag.
Here are 10 simple steps to help you identify an original LV monogram bag (please note that these are generic and styles may differ on some minute details):
1. Monogram pattern will be perfectly straight and all designs will be symmetrical i.e if there’s half of a fleur-de-lis on one end of the monogram there’ll be half of a fleur-de-lis on the other side going across.
2. LV uses a continuous piece of leather for the main body of a Speedy so your monograms should be upside down on one side of the bag. Also note that there’s no bottom seam because it’s a continuous piece of leather that’s used.
3. Stitching of the bag is always impeccable and perfectly done. It’s usually done by hand with a mustard yellow thread as opposed to a bright yellow thread that replicas have. You should also be able to tell the difference between the hand stitching and the machine stitching that replicas normally have.
4. The leather used by LV for their bag is oxidising cow hide leather that darkens over time. You can take a drop of water, put it on a spot and if it is original it should darken.
5. The heat stamp should be perfectly pressed on and should include the country which the bag was made. Spacing should be equal. The heat stamp is closely connected to the date stamp
6. The Date stamp which is usually under the pocket inside the bag. It’s a six digit alphanumeric code with two letters and four numbers. The letters indicate the country where the bag was made, (check that it correlates with the country of manufacture in the heat stamp) and the numbers indicate the year and month the bag was made. The 1st and 3rd digits come together to indicate the month, the 2nd and 4th digits come together to indicate the year of manufacture. Country codes for LV bags are as follows:

France: A0, A1, A2, AA, AAS (special order), AN, AR, AS, BA, BJ, BU, DU, CO, CT, ET, FL, LW, MB, MI, NO, RA, RI, SD, SL, SN, SP, SR, TH, TR, VI, VX
USA: FC, FH, LA, OS, SD, FL
Spain: CA, LO, LB, LM, LW
Italy: BC, BO, CE, FO, MA, RC, RE, SA, TD
Germany: LP
Switzerland: DI, FA

So a bag with SP1901 in the date stamp was manufactured in France in October 1991.
This date format applies to LV bags that were manufactured after 1990s.

Pre-1990s LV bags had a three digit date stamp with the first two numbers being the year and subsequent numbers showing the month.

For bags manufactured after 2007 the format now follows a weekly order i.e. SD 3077 means the bag was manufactured in the 37th week of 2007 in the United States of America.
First & third digits = Week
Second & fourth digits = Year
7. The canvas of the bag is usually thick with a brown lining inside the bag.

We hope you found this helpful, especially if you purchase pre-loved luxury designer items. We would love to hear from you on your experiences.
Have a lovely weekend.
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