Fashion, like many creative and artistic areas, is born from inspiration. No matter if it’s a song, an image or the first thing you see when crossing the street. Those details are the source of the brilliant and amazing ideas that artists ultimately work with. The real problem is often from whom exactly you draw that inspiration. In fashion, this can be a tricky issue.
Recently, the designer of the Dublin-based streetwear brand Arnold Park Studios posted on Instagram, questioning whether he had been copied by the brand Zara. Anyone would say that this should be a scandal. However, intellectual property in art is sometimes somewhat “abstract”, and these types of cases can have very different outcomes.
Andy Beller, designer of Arnold Park Studios, explained his opinion directly and clearly:
“To be perfectly clear – if you work in fashion, and get overly precious about people taking influence from your work… you’re probably in the wrong industry.”
In this post, Beller expressed his more sincere opinion on the case. He explained that he was shopping at Zara when he noticed that one of the T-shirts had a graphic that he described as ‘their version of the APS Real Estate Logo T-Shirt’. He explains that this is the first time he feels he has been used as a reference in a design and adds:
“While I was slightly taken aback, my overriding feeling was excitement at having been noticed by their design team.”
Far from feeling “robbed” or “deliberately copied”, he says to feel “flattered to know that my work is being seen, and deemed worthy of copying by my peers.”
To defend his point of view, he explains that there are always references in fashion. He himself admits that this logo was inspired by a set of illustrations and typefaces taken from old newspapers. He also explains that, after two decades in fast fashion, he himself has made his own “interpretations” of other designers’ work and that he’d be a massive hypocrite if he complained about an incident like this.
This leads me to wonder, then, if everyone uses references and inspiration, where can we find true originality?
This is not the first or last case where we see a brand as big as Zara “drawing inspiration” from emerging or smaller brands. Not everyone takes it as “flattering” as Andy Beller.
Big brands and retailers, like Shein or Inditex, produce hundreds of different items monthly. This is a massive work that requires continuous ideas and designs. With the rise of these ultra-fast fashion brands, copying the designs of independent brands and selling copycat styles for a fraction of the price seems to be key to their success. In many of these cases, small designers have filed complaints and taken legal action. However, this does not always lead to a happy ending for those affected.
In the analysis carried out in The Journal by Elaine Maguire O’Connor, a consultant working in fashion law, she points out that “Rather than pay a designer to license a design, it simply works out cheaper for them to steal a design, and if they are sued, they’ll settle with the plaintiff.” Impact not only on creative minds, but also on the economy of small businesses.
We live in a world where everything is moving faster and faster, ultra-fast fashion will become ultra-ultra fast fashion, and social media will be its main showcase, as it has been until now. Our hopes lie with the creative minds of small brands, and our responsibility as consumers is to ask ourselves: Where do we draw the line between inspiration and copying?
