Time to Knock It off! 

These past two weeks have brought one social media scandal after another to the limelight.  . These design houses churn out dozens, if not hundreds of prints a month and while their in-house designers are at work creating the odd original print now and then, copy-pasting off Pintrest has, until now, has been the more attractive and convenient option. This may have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the vigilant social media night watch that has taken up the fight against plagiarism as its sole purpose in life.





First of all, there’s nothing unprecedented about this situation; designers all over the world have been feeding off each other’s ideas since time immemorial. Italian designer Roberto Cavalli has been on an aggressive rampage against Michael Kors for years, accusing the American designer of being “the biggest copy designer in the world.”  Georgio Armani famously accused Dolce Gabanna of copying his quilted trouser design. The instances are endless.





Recently in Pakistan, scandals have erupted around the frequent use and abuse of prints. Around two weeks ago, blogger Aamiriat exposed a Sapphire budgie print that was a replica of an original design created and uploaded to Pinterest by Swedish graphic designer and illustrator, Johanna Burai. He tagged both Khadijah Shah (Creative Director at Sapphire) and Burai on the post, allowing one to explain and the other to be informed. Johanna Burai was justifiably upset as professional graphic designers make a living off their illustrations. Khadijah Shah, to her credit, was quick to respond with an apology and a promise to rectify the situation and compensate the artist for her work.





“Using the Internet for prints has been a norm and I admit that we have not been vigilant in checking prints for copyrights,” Khadijah Shah spoke to Aamna Haider Isani for this story. “But when this issue arose we decided to institute strict regulations. We have implemented the five-change rule, which brings any design into legal bounds. We have also hired graphic designers and artists to create exclusive prints so that we have novelty value; until now we had mostly textile designers. We’re very print specific so we’ve subscribed to portals that license us to use their prints. As for the designers whose prints we used, we’re in talks to compensate them.





“We took these decisions as I do not want any of my brands to be associated with plagiarism,” she continued to explain. “I do believe high street brands have more leverage. Zara’s success lies on the fact that they bring trends from the runway to stores within two weeks. But we don’t want to be in the limelight for the wrong reasons ever again. We are taking necessary precautions. We can’t do anything about prints already in production – as we work four months in advance – but in the future it won’t happen.”