Okay, so it is no big story that in the fashion business occasionally people take inspiration from celebrity, runway or vintage styles. Heck, we at Trashy Diva take all of our inspiration from retro looks. BUT, there is a clear difference between borrowing ideas from well worn vintage styles and BLATANT theft from an active small business.
First, let me set the stage for you if you don’t know about Trashy Diva. We are in New Orleans and we have been in business here for going on 12 years. I am the owner and designer of the company. We are small and have an in house staff of between 6-12 depending on the season. We operate 3 local boutiques, a wholesale business, and the trashydiva.com website. Members of the Trashy Diva staff also work hard in creating their own projects from acting, arial performance, modeling, and supporting families. There are even also a few who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and are still working to recover. We are all real people here. We are a staff of ladies that generally love our job and try our best everyday to make a contribution to the world with everything that we do. We make clothing because we are passionate about vintage style and original design. The Trashy Diva clothing line means that these people have jobs and get paid. We are the classic example of a small business. Sometimes I feel like we are super successful, but most of the time I (like most smaller independant designers) am just tring to keep a company running and pay all of our bills on time with honesty, integrity, and without harming anyone else’s livelyhood.
Well, now that you know about us, let me tell you about what has happened to us. Yesterday, a customer brought in a photo of a dress (printed out from one of our regular wholesale customers UNIQUE-VINTAGE.COM.- Now, if you haven’t heard of them, then no suprise. They are a generic non-offensive site, but not a site exploding with any original personality ). Anyway, this photo is of one of my dresses-but in a different color. The customer was wondering if we got some new colors instock in the popular “Trixie” dress. After a bit of investigation we find out that this website has actually taken one of our dresses to a factory and had the dress copied and is selling the dress as their design under their label on their website. WHAT!!?!
I have been continually manufacturing this ORIGINAL design since at least 2002! I have countless hours and dollars investing in the continual perfection of this dress pattern. The dress backstory should anyone question the origin: This dress was first made in approx 2002 in a silk ‘ballerina print’ in black and white. This first version was modeled after a vintage Alfred Shaheen style dress. It featured a removable strap skinny neck strap, a longer circle skirt, a bullet bra inner bust, a much drapier outerbust and all over different specs for the garment pieces. The dress was lovely, but has been reinvented from this vintage original dress and repatterened many times to get our now PERT short and sweet -modern busted-wide neck tie -shorter skirt version that has been adapted to fit a variety of heights through a rounded underbust/waist cut and even fuller circle skirt. I have hand drafted and adjusted this pattern with love up every season from 2002 until the summer of 2007 when our cotton dresses first appeared on the market. It is but a shaddow of our 2002 version (and of the vintage version) and has been uniquely our own for many years. This 2007 version is what I find shown and copied on this website. Not a Shaheen dress, not a Hawaiian style dress, not a new original that looked similar, not a misc. copy of a vintage style, but MY DRESS that I know backwards and forwards! Why did this greedy company copy my dress?
Well we asked, and we really didn’t get much of a response. No denial. Actually, they seemed angry with us for even asking. How dare we!
Over the past year this online retailer has bought a lot of this dress style from Trashy Diva and apparently it sold really well for them. Obviously, they don’t care about the designers that they represent or the uniqueness of the goods that they sell. Designers beware- apparently if they like your stuff and it sells well you’ll see your designs with their brand name. I am sure that we are only the first of a long list of small vendors that will be exploited by this retailer.
We are not the real victims. Our customers are the ones who unknowingly are sold counterfiet and knock off copies of our goods-expecting quality- branded goods and getting fakes.
We appeal to all of our readers and those who are also in the industry to take a stand against those that exploit artists and creators. Unique Vintage is just not so ‘unique’ to us. Join us in expressing your disapproval for this theft and infringement by not supporting those like Unique-Vintage.com.
You can express any concerns about these copies by email directly to the company at: Katie@unique-vintage.com or by phone at 1-800-721-6589. (These details are publically listed on their website)
If you want a FAKE COPY of one of my ‘Trixie’ dresses for double the price of an original, then shop unique-vintage.com (you can even use the details above to purchase one). If not, please purchase the Trixie Dress through the www.trashydiva.com website or an authorized Trashy Diva distributer.
We are also doing our part to end any confusion by pulling this dress style from our wholesale offerings and selling it directly to our retail customers for $34. We will continually manufacture this dress with the same Trashy Diva quality as before, but in the future it will only be available through Trashy Diva boutique and at www.trashydiva.com. We will be continually updating our colors and prints so that not only will we have originals for less than the cost of the fakes, but we will have an even greater selection available in the future.
(18 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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