The story below is about intellectual property in the fashion industry. More specifically, it’s about big chains and mega-brands borrowing stealing designs from smaller companies and independent designers. The ethical issues are muddy, but only along the edges: it’s normal and unavoidable and ethically innocuous for designers to be influenced by each other. But to take someone else’s entire design is pretty clearly not OK. But going to court over it is, as the story below points out, far more expensive than most small companies or designers can handle.
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LINK: The Counterfeit Clothing Wars (by Olivia Quenneville for The Scribbler)
During the last week of November 2018, Khloe Kardashian’s clothing brand, Good American, released a holiday collection that included a black crewneck with red lettering that read: “Santa is a woman.” When she saw it, Megan Campagnolo – a 29-year-old Toronto designer and owner of the independent brand Rosehound Apparel – was convinced Kardashian had ripped off her design. Campagnolo immediately posted photos of the copied crewneck on Rosehound’s Instagram account, comparing it to a design she released a week prior: a red crewneck with white lettering, and the exact same text. It was as a holiday edition of her “Satan is a woman” design. The post received hundreds of comments and re-posts from offended Rosehound fans, but the copycat crewneck has so far remained on Good American’s website, with no comment from Kardashian…..
What do you think?
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