Fast Fashion Brand ZARA Allegedly Plagiarizes New York Artist Street Graffiti

Spanish apparel retail giant ZARA is not the first time it has been exposed to plagiarism. The question is raised by a New York artist, Patrick Waldo. Patrick Waldo said that ZARA copied his signature design and applied the pattern to a T-shirt.

As early as 2010, Patrick Waldo was inspired to see someone graffiti on the advertising screen in the New York subway. He thought that writing letters on the faces of people in advertisements was not good-looking, if the letters were written like beards in advertisements. The heroine's lips are even more interesting. So he practiced every night in magazines and pictures, and then boldly painted “beard” on the faces of all the female protagonists in the subway. As a result, he was arrested by New York police in June 2011. These graffiti have also become the iconic creative work of Patrick Waldo.

ZARA's T-shirt design is indeed somewhat similar to its graffiti creativity, but the heroine has been replaced by a pencil-drawn image. Patrick Waldo expressed strong dissatisfaction and anger at ZARA on his microblog and asked for compensation, but he also stated that he will not file a lawsuit on the matter.

It is not uncommon for ZARA to encounter plagiarism. In 2007, a street artist claimed to have stolen the design by ZARA; in 2010, a French woman accused ZARA of stealing her photo and printing it on her clothes without any consent.

Plagiarism is improved and quickly put on the shelves. These are the lifelines for the development of fast fashion brands. A strong team of designers traveled around the world's major fashion weeks, making a new revision to the trend of big-name fashion. It was sold for a few days and sold at fair prices.

In the fashion industry, plagiarism is very difficult to define and judge, and it is difficult to impose restrictions on the law. For the current state of the industry, good brands and designers can only make a fuss about product quality and stable and loyal consumer groups.