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She takes them out, looks deep down inside the boot and finds the label: Made in China.

This is perfectly legal and has been going on for years. The boots are made in China of genuine australian sheepskin, and the brand, ugg Australia, is — according to Wikipedia — a registered trademark owned by an American firm called Deckers Outdoor Corp.

ugg Boot scandal or sign of the times? You decide.

Say you walk into a shoe shop looking for ugg Boots. You spot a pair with a little Australian flag attached and the words Genuine Australian Sheepskin on the label. The brand? ugg Australia. You buy them for about $230-ish, wrap them up and hand them to your better half on Christmas day, and say “Merry Christmas, hon, I bought you a pair of Aussie Ugg boots!”

How this came to be is a long, complicated story full of copyright challenges, Aussie indignation and so on, but apparently it had its root in 1978 when an Aussie surfer and his American cohort brought the first shipment of ugg boots to North America, going on to considerable success. The Ugg Australia trademark was eventually acquired by Deckers.

The term Ugg Boot is actually a generic term that has been used in Australia and New Zealand since before the Second World War to describe sheepskin boots. Aussies and New Zealanders still make them under various names, but in the early days were evidently too easygoing or laconic to worry about snagging the Ugg trademark.

According to the uggstore.com.au website, the way to tell a genuine — or fair dinkum, as they say — Aussie product is to look for a green triangle tag with a stylized gold kangaroo on it.

Some Aussie manufacturers shun the word ugg entirely, preferring the term Genuine Australian Sheepskin Boots. Or you can just look deep inside the boot for the Made in Australia (or New Zealand) label.

And selling them festooned with Aussie Flags and Genuine Australian Sheepskin tags is, again, perfectly legal.

But you have to ask: Is it fair dinkum?

In any case, ugg Australia Boots appear to be a quality product and not some cheap knock-off.