ATTACK OF THE CLONES
As more celebrities fashion themselves designers, brands are wary of knockoffs — and raising a stink online
IF imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the fashion industry just might be filled with suck-ups.
From clandestine counterfeiters who sell fake brand-name handbags out of their cars to the fast-fashion giants that make runway rip-offs, there’s an epidemic of copying in the fashion world. And celebrities with their own clothing and jewelry lines are some of the most shameless copycats of late.
Take Emily Ratajkowski, the “Blurred Lines” video babe whose bodacious bod was her springboard to superstardom. Her line of skimpy swimwear, called Inamorata, launched this past November, with Ratajkowski herself as its model.
But it wasn’t long after the suits were unveiled that another designer, Lisa Marie Fernandez, cried foul. Two of Ratajkowski’s styles, she claimed, were direct copies of her own. Fernandez filed a lawsuit in New York federal court in November 2017. The case is still pending (and Inamorata still sells both of the suits in question), but the 26-year-old model and actress has already lost on Instagram, with anti-knockoff vigilante account @DietPrada calling her out to its 297,000 followers.
Susan Scafidi, the founder of Fordham Law School’s Fashion Law Institute, calls this strategy “name and shame” and says it can be very effective, especially for small brands.
“If you get bitten, and can’t afford the lawyer or the time it would take for a lawsuit, you can take to Instagram,” Scafidi says. “You post the side-by-side comparison and call out your copyist.”
That’s what Los Angeles-based indie designer Destiney Bleu did this past June when she noticed that Khloé Kardashian’s Good American line was selling a sheer, crystal-studded bodysuit similar to her own bodysuits. Bleu posted several images of her designs next to a shot of Kardashian’s with the hashtag: #nofrauds. Kardashian’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter asking Bleu to correct her “false statements” and stating that Kardashian had never heard of Bleu. Bleu produced evidence that Kardashian’s stylist had indeed purchased some of her designs. Although there hasn’t been an official settlement, the bodysuit in question is now nowhere to be found on Good American’s Web site.
Big-name luxury brands have also used social media as a megaphone for their anti-copycat causes. In March 2016, Italian shoemaker Aquazzura called Ivanka Trump out on Instagram for allegedly copying the design of their $785 tasseled sandals for her lower-priced line. With a photo comparing the two pieces, the brand wrote, “One of the most disturbing things in the fashion industry is when someone blatantly steals your copyright designs and doesn’t care.” Aquazzura also sued Trump, and the lawsuit was reported settled for undisclosed terms this past November.
Other companies just go the legal route. In December 2007, jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels sued model and aspiring jewelry designer Heidi Klum’s company, Heidi Klum GmbH and her collaborator, Mouawad USA for more than $25,000 in damages. They claimed that a clover pendant from Klum’s QVC jewelry range looked too similar to their own vintage, four-leaf “Alhambra” pieces. They settled for undisclosed terms. Almost two years later, Klum shuttered her line and blamed her business partner, saying he wasn’t “knowledgeable.” But such legal victories are fairly rare. “Fashion design is one of the least-protected areas of creativity that we have in the US,” says Scafidi, attributing the lack of regulation to the fact that it’s still a relatively young mass industry. Plus, most lawmakers on Capitol Hill don’t care very much about fashion.
Sometimes these issues can be settled outside of court — and off of social media.
In May 2011, the Parisian husbandand-wife team behind Hanna Bernhard accused Iris Apfel, the bespectacled New York fashion icon, of copying one of their sparkly brooches, a glittering toucan, for her line with Home Shopping Network. The couple pointed out on their Web site that Apfel owned their original toucan brooch, and said they were “ready” for a fight — but they didn’t get one. Just a few days later, HSN released a statement saying Apfel had mistaken the pin for an unsigned vintage piece, and would immediately, respectfully, remove her version from the collection. Apfel continues to sell her Rara Avis line of costume jewelry, now with a modified toucan brooch, through HSN.
And, while celebrity knockoffs are becoming increasingly common as more and more stars extend their brand to fashion, knockoffs themselves are nothing new, according to Sara Marcketti, a professor at Iowa State University and the co-author of “Knock It Off: A History of Design Piracy in the US Women’s Ready-To-Wear Apparel Industry.”
“The history of knockoffs goes all the way back to the beginning of the history of the ready-to-wear apparel industry,” she says. “Women’s Wear Daily started in 1910, and in one of their very first issues, they talked about the knockoff business being an evil, and how it could be controlled.”