Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer, has found itself in hot water after designer Tuesday Bassen accused the company of stealing her design ideas. Bassen is an L.A. based illustrator who most often shares her work on Instagram with her 103k followers. Yesterday, the illustrator decided to break her silence and shared the difficulty Zara has been giving her the past year.
“I’ve been pretty quiet about this, until now. Over the past year, @zara has been copying my artwork (thanks to all that have tipped me off–it’s been a lot of you),” Bassen said on Instagram. “I had my lawyer contact Zara and they literally said I have no base because I’m an indie artist and they’re a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIEGImxgFKe/?taken-by=tuesdaybassen
Bassen has been building her case against Zara by pointing out specific pins and patches the Spanish retailer has copied. It would be easy for Zara to steal the designs by simply checking out Bassen’s website where all her work is available for purchase.
On her Instagram post, Bassen also expressed the financial burden she had suffered due to Zara’s plagiarism. The lack of credit has allegedly already cost the artist $2,000 as she had to have her lawyer send the contact letter to Zara. Despite her lack of funds, Bassen plans to continue her legal actions against the popular company.
“I first noticed the copies in early 2016, when hundreds of fans reached out to me privately to ask if I was working with them or if they were plagiarizing my work,” Bassen told Refinery29. Since then, Bassen says Zara has stolen four more of her designs. But when she confronted the company, Bassen was told by the defendant’s legal team that her work was “too simple” to build a case. The legal team also pointed out that Bassen’s brand doesn’t have the same reach as Zara.
This hasn’t discouraged Bassen though. This kind of wrongdoing, “has an awful impact on the livelihood of an artist,” she told Refinery29. “This is how I support myself, and they are diluting my brand by literally stealing from me.” Bassen wants compensation for her stolen designs.
Instead of asking for financial help from her followers, Bassen asked for people to repost and tag Zara on all social media platforms. Popular social media personalities Tess Holiday, Nicolette Mason and Akilah Hughes responded to Bassen’s call for action. Adam J. Kurtz, an NYC-based designer and artist also accused Zara of stealing other people’s work.
Bassen will surely continue encountering trouble with the $100 billion company but at least she has gained attention and support from many. Zara is known for being media-shy because their designers are anonymous, a fact has contributed to famous designers, like Christian Louboutin, to lose against them in court.
But according to The Fashion Law, Bassen might still have a good chance to win because of copyright protection. It will all come down to the details that her work and Zara share. Zara has met its enemy and her name’s Tuesday Bassen.
[H/T: Refinery29]
