Have a look at these two dresses. Can you spot the difference? Almost identical, aren’t they? The dress on the right is designed by small
Melbourne label TV, the other by low-priced international company
Sunny Girl. The first is made in Australia, hand-finished in Melbourne and will sell for $520. The second dress which featured in Shop Til You Drop magazine, is made in China by Sunny Girl and is in-store now for $44.95.
These two dresses are just the latest example of a culture of copying in the Australian fashion industry that drives out creativity, originality and Australian ingenuity.
TV believes Sunny Girl copied their unique design which was developed in Australia, while Sunny Girl maintains that their dress uses a stock fabric.
“I couldn’t believe it when we were told about it,” say Monika Tywanek, who runs the label TV with Ingrid Verner. “Our dress is not even in the stores yet, we showed it once at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in April and it’s still in production. We developed a special fabric with our knitwear manufacturer in Melbourne and sketched the design back in January.”
Sunny Girl deny copying the dress from TV. Hanna Szykowny Product & PR Manager for the label said via email “The dress you are referring to was originally purchased as a sample from the high street on our winter buying trip earlier this year and we have made many versions of this basic body-con dress shape & are still doing so for our summer collection (obviously in a variety of prints & fabrications).
The fabric featured in the version of the dress featured in SHOP (Til You Drop) was purchased in Guang Zhou (China) fabric market and was a stock fabric. I was unaware that the design was featured in Oz fashion week & any similarity is coincidental.”
A designer working for a major high street fashion chain said plagiarism in the industry was rife and the fault of CEOs and buyers. The designer, who wanted to remain nameless said "Copying is basically what the Australian market is all about and it comes down to a lack of vision from CEOs and buyers. For example our buyers will buy a dress from Europe, by someone like Isabel Marant, then we have to copy it."
She said ripping off overseas designers made her and her colleagues feel undervalued. "Australian designers at the major stores and laels would love it if their bosses would use their designs and their vision. It's a lack of confidence and vision from CEOs that stops them using original designs. They need to know something has worked somewhere else first."
Like most young or emerging designers in this situation, Tywanek and Verner feel confused, ripped-off and uncertain about how to take action.
Trevor Choy, an intellectual property lawyer who TV have approached for advice, says the best way to protect your designs against copying is to register them under the Designs Act. In 2008, Review won a Federal Court case against the company behind Charlie Brown and Lilli, after Life Style Investments Pty Ltd was found to have infringed Review’s registered design.
“The applicable law depends on the rip off. But copyright is a very difficult and expensive (court cases can start from $50K to $100K preparation and over $10K per day) law to use. It's better to register designs."
Choy estimates it would cost at least $2000 to register a design, a cost which such a small label can barely afford. But doing it properly is crucial to defending your designs successfully.
"How you register your designs is critical if you ever need to prove someone has infringed your design," Choy adds. “Understand that not all designs can be registered, only particular features. Also, registration is not as easy as it looks (the majority of self-filed design applications get it wrong and are not worth the paper they're printed on), so they need to talk to a designs law expert (choose carefully, even the lawyers get it wrong unless they are really experienced in dealing with the fashion industry) to work out what they need to cover based on their designs.”
If you can't afford to register your designs, it is of course always possible to shame your copiers into submission. Considering the QANTAS SOYA awards have short-listed TV for their innovative designs, this may be an option for the label.
RMIT will hold a public lecture on intellectual property for designers as a result of recent copying cases. See Trevor Choy's blog Protecting Brands for details.
Do you have a similar story to tell? Email melanie.hick (@) thevine.com.au with the details.
Lead image: L Shop Till You Drop, R Grazia