What's new copy-cat?

British fashion designer Luella Bartley’s eponymous label may have lost financial backing at the end of last year, but it seems that its spring/summer designs will see the light of day after all, be it via fast-fashion dresses.

Boohoo.com’s recently launched spring/summer collection features a number of pieces boasting a heart cut-out similar to Luella’s distinctive design and an almost identical Eighties-inspired polka-dot bandeau dress.



Of course this isn’t the first time that fast-fashion retailers have blurred the line between taking inspiration from and copying the work of top fashion houses, and it won’t be the last.

Just weeks ago Lindsay Lohan was accused of copying a Jen Kao Fall ’09 dress for her 6126 fashion line after sketches of her designs seemed to show striking similarities between the two. In 2007 French fashion house Chloe forced Topshop to destroy over 1,000 yellow dungarees, claiming that it was a copy, and in the same year the Diane von Furstenburg (DVF) Studio filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against U.S. retailer Forever 21 for allegedly plagiarising two of its spring/summer dress designs.

While Luella may not be producing the dress designs it showcased at London Fashion Week for the upcoming season, Bartley may still be able to sue for breach of copyright, giving that, we are assuming, she hasn’t licensed or assigned copyright to others. In which case, could the online retailer be seen to be gaining financially at the expense of copyright holder Luella?

And where would Bartley stand if she re-launched her brand, with the help of a new financial backer, and wanted to roll out the designs? Would there be damage by association? Would her original designs lose desirability due to the fact that thousands already owned similar pieces?

Of course, the two labels are catering for very different markets, one offers top-end designer and the other high street fast-fashion, and it remains to be seen if such imitation will much bother former fashion journalist Bartley, who is due to publish a book with the working title ‘Luella’s Guide to English Style’ in September.


Imitation - the highest form of flattery?

They do say that imitation if the highest form of flattery, but it isn’t always seen as such in the fashion industry. Indeed, fashion houses used to physically hide their designs from competition. A Business of Fashion article on the subject quotes a 1950s’ press officer for Christian Dior as saying that “all precautions must have been taken to ensure that no member of the profession would be attending” their fashion shows.

But, as the article rightly highlights, thanks to the rise of fast fashion and the volume of fashion bloggers, the industry has never been as transparent as it is today.

According to the author, Competition and Intellectual Property lawyer Hanne Melin, the law dictates that Intellectual Property Rights mustn’t “unreasonably restrict the ability of others to develop new ideas and produce new works”.

But as ‘implied license’ can be used as a defense against copyright, with a defendant stating that the copyright owner knew what they were doing and for a significant period of time did not act to prevent it, the impetus must lie with the fashion houses to actively defend their copyright.

This is exactly what Diane von Furstenburg did by establishing a three-year strategy to address counterfeiting and intellectual property issues, during which Forever 21 was just one of the companies hit with a lawsuit.

Such cases will surely have acted as a warning to others not to even think about ‘sampling’ the DVF’s designs, and if other labels want to be seen as similarly untouchable, they must fiercely defend what is theirs.