The story began on 19 July 2016 when the Los Angeles-based designer Tuesday Bassen uploaded an astounding image on Instagram that compared her designs to nearly identical Zara products, stating that the major fashion label Zara had been stealing her designs “over the past year”.
Included in the image is a snippet of a letter from Zara’s parent organization Inditex that dismissed her claims, citing that the “lack of distinctiveness of [Bassen]’s purported designs makes it very hard to see how a significant part of the population anywhere in the world would associate the signs with Tuesday Bassen”.
The letter continued to compare the number of notifications that Bassen had received about the plagiarism to the millions of visitors Zara’s websites receive on a yearly basis, going on to imply that based on the figures, Bassen’s following and consequently, her work, are insignificant in relation to Zara’s international customer base.
Designers and consumers alike rallied to express their shock and disgust at the condescending tone of the letter and brazen show of indifference towards Bassen’s claims, with some even calling for a boycott of the massive clothing brand.
Soon after, New York-based designer Adam J. Kurtzchimed in with another collage, this time exposing Zara products that have allegedly been ripped off from several other independent artists over the past year.
it's time to hold @ZARA accountable for stealing from independent creatives like @tuesdaybassen, me & so many others pic.twitter.com/4Poe9VgIZr
— Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) July 20, 2016
He put together a webpage aptly titled Shop ZARA’s Art Theft Collection that compiled all the stolen artworks so far and linked each item to the original artists’ page, where visitors can purchase the products directly from the creators.
Currently, 22 designs by 18 separate artists have already been listed.
In a new Instagram update, Bassen reveals that she has obtained a new “aggressive” lawyer and is actively pursuing the case.
Follow Bassen on Instagram at ‘tuesdaybassen’ for more real-time updates and support the artists by purchasing their products directly from them via theShop ZARA’s Art Theft Collection webpage.