Banksy calls to shoplifters after getting shirty at ‘stolen’ designs
BANKSY has told his fans to steal clothes from a designer brand after accusing it of copyright theft.
The anonymous street artist called on “all shoplifters” to go to Guess’s Regent Street outlet in London after it released a collection that incorporates some of his most famous graffiti paintings.
Banksy said in a post on Instagram yesterday afternoon: “They’ve helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?”
Security guards were seen shutting the shop less than an hour after the post, which amassed more than 600,000 likes.
Employees removed artwork advertising the collection from the windows as customers were told to put all items they had not purchased yet back on the shelves before leaving.
One witness said staff were “flustered” as they rushed to strip mannequins of clothes from the collection.
“There were staff reaching through with plastic scrapers and they were scraping off the Banksy sign from the inside of the window,” he said.
“It did not seem planned and it seemed like a panicked, ad hoc situation where they were shutting the shop.”
Guess’s 34-item autumn and winter collection, a collaboration with graffiti clothing company Brandalised, was unveiled on Nov 3 and remains available to buy online. It ranges in price from £35 for a T-shirt to £230 for a faux fur coat with Banksy’s Flying Balloon Girl mural printed on the back.
Other items available include a £140 handbag and a £100 faux fur vest, both of which feature Flying Balloon Girl. The collection’s release follows Banksy’s defeat in two copyright cases in recent years.
He was stripped of his trademark for the Flower Thrower in September 2020 after a two-year legal battle with a card company.
The following year in May he was stripped of the intellectual property rights to a 2002 monkey artwork originally painted on the wall of a Brighton nightclub.
In 2009, Guess paid £4million in damages to Gucci for infringing its copyright by producing designs that were deemed too similar to the Italian brand’s logo. Banksy and Guess were approached for comment.