Inditex, the owner of the Zara fashion line, has responded to claims that the Spanish clothing chain pulled a Melania and plagiarised a number of pieces it sold in its stores. California-based artist Tuesday Bassen claimed that her attempts to point out the similarities fell on deaf ears, with Zara representatives implying Bassen was simply not famous enough to matter.
Yesterday, Bassen posted a collage on her Instagram account in which she highlighted the near identical designs of various badges and patches sold by Zara to one’s of her own creation. Bassen included in her post a letter she claims her legal team received from Zara’s own.
“We reject your claims,” the letter states. “The lack of distinctiveness of your client’s purported designs makes it very hard to see how a significant part of the population anywhere in the world would associate the [designs] with Tuesday Bassen.” The letter goes on to add that the Zara website’s web traffic saw an average of 98m monthly visits last year, implying that Bassen is too small to compete.
Disappointed with the response, and given that she had spent $2,000 on legal fees thus far, Bassen posted the letter to her social media accounts, from which it was widely shared online.
Now Inditex, the Spanish retailing giant owned by Amancio Ortega, the world’s second-richest man, has responded to the controversy.
“Inditex has the utmost respect for the individual creativity of all artists and designers and takes all claims concerning third-party intellectual property rights very seriously,” a spokesperson told Vogue. "Inditex was recently contacted by Tuesday Bassen's lawyers who noted the use of illustrations in some badges sourced externally and on clothes in its group stores. The company immediately opened an investigation into the matter and suspended the relevant items from sale. Inditex's legal team is also in contact with Tuesday Bassen's lawyers to clarify and resolve the situation as swiftly as possible."
