Know Your Worth

I look up to young, aspiring fashion designers, those who share my passion for fashion but contribute to the zeitgeist with their untapped inventory of contemporary ideas. The opportunities for young artists and designers can be far and few between, it’s hard to break into a world of brand supremacy. If you don’t have a name in business or are associated with a big name as your ticket in, it’s very challenging to kick start a career in fashion and bring your designs to life on a real stage. When a brand extends an invitation for young designers to submit their work for an opportunity to intern at the company and be a part of the conversation, thousands will apply. 

My story for you today is a true story, names have been redacted of course, but this story centers around an aspiring designer with a dream of bringing her ideas into the fashion world if given the right platform. Let’s call her Paige. When her favorite brand, let’s call it Verano, posts an opportunity to submit a mood board and style or design corresponding looks for an opportunity to volunteer at Verano for the summer, how could Paige miss out! No matter how low the chances were of getting it she decided to apply anyway. She developed a mood board and some designs inspired by the casual and rustic feel of going on a summer fishing trip. She entitled her collection, “Gone Fishing.” The submission included plaids and other warm neutral colors, reminiscent of your grandfather’s fishing attire but with a more modern, bohemian twist. Her looks featured oversized, wide legged overalls and denim decorated with fish appliques and patches to tie in the fishing element to the presentation. She submitted her application with hope alongside realistic expectations, and unfortunately, she was not chosen. Bummer, but Paige moved on with her life. 

That is until about 6 or 7 months later when Verano released a Spring/Summer collection entitled, you guessed it, “Gone Fishing.” What a strange coincidence Paige thought to herself, but the similarities didn’t stop there. Soon she was able to match the overalls on the website with her original design, down to the suspender like straps and wide-legged pants. This collection even featured similar fish patches and appliques applied to Verano’s pieces, though Paige would argue that her patches were better.

Could it be that brands rely on opportunities like this where they invite the next generation of artists to submit their ideas as a way of fishing (no pun intended) for what’s next and keeping their finger on the pulse of what’s new and happening now. 

Now, this theory is based on assumptions made on events that allegedly took place, so in no way am I saying that this one hundred percent happened here. 

That being said, this isn’t the first instance, by far, of brands stealing designs from smaller artists and passing them off as their own. For example, let’s say a small, local artist creates his own unique design featuring a movie poster embroidered onto the front of a shirt. This obviously required a great deal of thought and care to execute and is likely priced accordingly to account for the hours it takes the artist to embroider the unique design by hand and purchase the materials himself.

However, let’s say this particular item blows up on social media, before you know it you may spot an ad from a major fast fashion distributor, like Shein, showcasing a shirt with the same movie poster embroidered onto the front, but upon ordering you’ll realize the quality of the product is far inferior and the “embroidery” will undo itself almost instantly in the wash, not to mention the unpleasant chemical smell you can always expect from fast fashion purchases. To meet the demands the business expects from their workers, the clothes are rushed into their plastic bags to be shipped out before the dye has time to even dry, resulting in the chemical odor getting trapped in the bag with the clothes. 

How is it that the internet is such an influential hub to share art and find opportunities like the internship I mentioned before, but also a dangerous landscape for idea poachers that feed off the naive artist who wants to share their ideas with the world in hopes of gaining attention and a following? But not all attention is good attention, if you gain the attention of an executive with deadlines for new ideas due this month, they might take advantage of your openness and repurpose your designs to fit their brand.

Let these stories be a lesson to recognize the worth in your ideas. You may think that you’re far from making it, meanwhile your ideas are catching the attention of professionals actively working and making money in the fashion world. As much as it sucks to have your art stolen, some say imitation is the highest form of flattery. 

So, I urge all readers to support incoming artists so that they have the means to create fashionable, unique pieces and profit from them before their ideas are featured on the cover of a magazine with no accreditation in sight! 

Know your worth, or someone else will, and they’ll use it to their advantage.