At Anna Sui’s spring show, attendees were given a T-shirt in their gift bags that had an Old West style wanted poster printed on it with the words “Forever Wanted,” an image of the owners of Forever 21, and the Bible quote, “Thou shalt not steal.” The shirts were in reference to the lawsuit Sui has pending against Forever 21. Sui claims that the retailer has been copying her looks since 2005 without her permission. Other designers, like Diane von Furstenberg and Gwen Stefani, are in litigation with the store as well, and are lobbying congress, trying to get a bill passed protecting their designs under copyright laws.

[Image: Getty]

As someone who frequently shops at Forever 21 to find on-trend clothing for cheap, I was disturbed by this news. While I completely believe in the importance of copyrighting creative work, I think there is a big difference between directly copying something and re-imaging something. When we were in school we were all taught that copying more than three joined words from someone else’s writing was considered plagiarism, but if you re-worded a document (thanks to a thesaurus), you were free and clear.

Of course I don’t know all the background to the Sui lawsuit, but isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery? And does Sui really think that a Forever 21 shopper who is buying a dress based on her collection for $25 is choosing it over her $400 original? In economics there’s a theory (the name of which I can’t remember because I took AP Econ five years ago) that you go into buying something with a set price range in mind. Someone with the set price range of $5 to $50, like a Forever 21 shopper, is very different from someone with the $100 to $400 range of, say, a Saks Fifth Avenue shopper (this Anna Sui dress from Saks costs $374, see link below). These are two very different shoppers with two very different incomes. Is Forever 21 stealing Anna Sui’s customers? I think not.

I believe that while directly ripping off a design (remember Courtney Love’s infamous Chanel knock-off? link to the article from Catwalkqueen.com below), creating an item that re-works a designer’s look and then selling it at drastically different price should be allowed.

Catwalkqueen.com
Saks.com