After watching last Thursday’s episode of “Grown-ish,” I began to wonder where lies the difference between imitation and inspiration? In this episode, Zoey (Yara Shahidi’s character) began a new internship under her new boss Esme Sharpe (Lala Anthony’s character). During this internship, Yara begins to do sketches and pitch new ideas to Esme. However, to Zoey’s surprise, her idea for a letterman jacket was marketed by Esme as her own original piece. Zoey began to wonder if she should stand up for herself and possibly risk losing her internship by outing her boss or moving on and not stealing another black woman’s shine. These issues happen too often in the workplace especially for women, people of color, small businesses, and interns. What are creators to do when this happens to them in the industry? Well, maybe that’s worth some conversation.
In this past year, there have been so many small businesses confronting larger influencers and corporations for copying their brands. When people speak out they are either met with backlash or immense support. Some say imitation is the best form of flattery, but when is it just straight-up stealing?
Last year Megan Thee Stallion began a campaign with Fashion Nova and was accused of stealing designer Aazhia’s designs. Aazhia took to Instagram to say “Ima break this down real simple! My dress was stolen and used in this Megan X FN collab! Was I told? No! Was I compensated? No.” While the pieces did look awfully similar, Thee Stallion responded by saying “A lot of times people say that they talked to somebody from my team. I don’t know what year that was,I don’t know who…what are you talking about…But the Dress has been done a lot over the years.” This proves how difficult it can be to speak out against certain issues. Oftentimes in fast fashion collabs, the collaborator won’t have any creative input on the collection. Neither woman may have known if the designs were stolen, but it is obvious that the clothing was similar.
There are so many ideas that are concrete evidence of imitation in this industry from white women coining black terminologies for their own benefit like calling cornrows boxer braids or when a brand like Guess steals logo designs from the black-owned brand Telfar.
On the other hand, some companies actually pay homage to the overlooked in the industry. In the spring/summer 2000 Christian Dior collection, John Galliano used Lauren Hill (A BLACK WOMAN) as his inspiration for the collection. It was a reflection of her style but didn’t take credit for all that she was. More things in fashion should pay homage rather than steal!
So what does this mean? It can be difficult to determine where certain trends derive from, if ideas are being stolen, or if it is just a mere coincidence. However, what can be learned from it all is to try to be original, and give credit where credit is due. If designers tap into smaller companies’/creators designs or ideas, there should definitely be compensation and/or recognition of some sort. In this imperfect world, that can be hard to come across. Most importantly, larger corporations should be resourceful and hire more diverse groups of designers and collaborate with smaller creators in order to create a more inclusive industry. After all, there is enough to go around. What do you think?