They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But I say, is it really when the imitation is so blatant that you can’t tell a difference between the imitated and the imitator? The news has recently been awash with trademark infringement stories, and rightly so, because this type of infringement is serious and spells financial disaster for the business involved. In the world of fashion, however, the existence of copycats is ten-fold that of anywhere else. Tatty Devine recently filed a legal complaint against Claire’s Accessories after several of the former’s designs, including a renowned dinosaur necklace were copied. Then, the highly documented story of Christian Louboutin, who fruitlessly dragged Parisian fashion house Yves Saint Laurent to the dock over its use of Louboutin’s famed red sole. But two recent situations of design stealing have left me, well, speechless. The first is that of Jessica Simpson taking rather direct inspiration from Christian Louboutin’s 2010-release ‘Statarata’ heel – in other words copying the shoe, renaming it ‘Evangel’, removing the red sole and selling it at an affordable price. Simpson’s $98 rip off of the $995 ‘Statarata’ heel is so obvious, even an orthodox, flat-sporting, anti-heel protestor would be able to spot the non-difference. The second scenario is similar to the first except it involves two mega-brands at loggerheads over what is effectively a poor attempt at covering up an obvious creative crime. Italian powerhouse Gucci has accused Guess and its footwear licensing company, Marc Fisher Footwear, of devising a “massive scheme” to copy Gucci’s trademarks, which include the classic square ‘G’, the diamond-shaped repeating pattern with interlocking G’s, the designer’s name in its script font, and the green and red stripe design.’ At first glance, I really can’t spot the difference between the two designer versions of the sneaker at […]