Fashionphile’s “master” authenticators undergo more than 8,000 hours of rigorous training to weed out designer fakes at the luxe online marketplace. Name of school The RealReal

For example, trainees learn quickly to spot an error in the date format on a Louis Vuitton bag or the metal alloy makeup of a Cartier watch.

A $25k Hermès Birkin bag smells good, and its Barenia leather feels good, but the retailer’s first round of checks is conducted by artificial intelligence, which is trained on 30 million images to detect nearly imperceptible differences in stitching and hardware placement.

Additionally, an algorithm calculates a product’s risk based on everything from the consignor’s selling history to its popularity on the black market. But counterfeiting is making progress every day, who will win this race for cheap luxury?