Chalk up another small victory for the independent artist in the stand against corporate retail giants.
Waterbury ceramicist Jeremy Ayers and his Instagram followers recently shamed fashion and home goods retailer Anthropologie into removing from their website a mug that looked remarkably like one of Ayers’s signature designs.
The mug, accordion-shaped with vertical striped glaze, has long been “an anchor of my work,” said Ayers. He designed the mug a decade ago and currently sells it for $35-$40. Anthropologie’s version was listed at $14.99.
When an Instagram follower alerted Ayers to the copycat mug, he took to his own Instagram account and called out Anthropologie for knocking-off his design. His social network immediately jumped into action, sharing--and even adding examples to--the story. Less than a day later, the mug disappeared from the retailer’s online store.
Anthropologie seems to have been at this copycat thing for a while, and they aren’t the only corporate retailers to be accused of the practice.
Clothing retailers like Old Navy, Forever 21, Zara, and Urban Outfitters (which is under the same ownership as Anthropologie) and celebrity entrepreneurs such as Kylie Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski all have their own laundry lists of copied designs. Luxury brands including Gucci and Chanel aren’t above copying others’ work, either.
All of these sins of greed, including Anthropologie’s multitude, are easy to find online. For example, in 2018, BBC reported on the case of ceramicist Tara Burke, based in Sydney, Australia, whose vase designs turned up on Anthropologie’s website two years after she turned down an offer to work for them.
According to the BBC report, Anthropologie’s statement declared “tremendous respect for the artist community” and expressed deep regret that in this instance, “our safeguards did not hold up to our standards.” Burke told the BBC reporter that the retailer “scum” had offered to have a conversation about her concerns, but did not indicate that compensation would be part of that discussion.
Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, Anthropologie had just come from dealing with a different accusation of stealing when Ayers’s followers took them to task for the copied mug.
In early March, Indigenous women-owned brand Orenda Tribe found a remarkable look-alike of one of their rainbow blouses on Anthropologie’s website. Instead of shaming the corporate giant, Orenda Tribe invited the retailer to take action by using the profits from the sale of its version of the blouse to support the Diné Skate Garden Project in the Navajo Nation. Although Anthropologie removed the blouse from its online store, at the time of this writing it has not acknowledged Orenda Tribe’s call to action.
For many independent designers, with a livable wage, years of practicing their craft, pride, and community orientation all on the line, imitation is definitely not the highest form of flattery. Imitation, however, is not the same thing as influence.
Ayers acknowledged that his own exploration of surface design on the “singular” accordion form is both his own and based in his study of art history. The stripes on his pieces are raw clay, Ayers explained. “Putting the clay under the glaze on display--most artists don’t show that.
Brancusi did it first,” he added, referring to notable early 20th-century Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
“I came to pottery from a desire to do it myself. Because I have art history in my brain, I don’t feel like I’m ripping off Brancusi,” said Ayers. However, Ayers asserted that “What Anthropologie did, take my bestselling amalgamation of ideas and make a blue-and-white version” for profit is a whole other jar of clay.
And the retailer doesn’t have to reveal the profits it made off the mug unless Ayers takes the case all the way to litigation. Most independent artists can’t absorb the legal fees to take their cases that far, explained Ayers, so “they [Anthropologie] are actually preying on us.”
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May 22, 2021 at 06:25PM
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Artist Ayers gets retail giant to pull copycat design — Waterbury Roundabout - Waterbury Roundabout
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