Is Fast Fashion Destroying the Industry?
Fast-fashion companies have been using other designers’ clothing and accessories, recreating the items, and selling them at a much lower price. While trademark and copyright law are sometimes helpful in addressing these issues, the world has started to see a shift in how companies are addressing this problem.
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Fast-fashion companies have become increasingly controversial in recent years for taking inspiration from other fashion companies. Specifically, there have been multiple lawsuits filed against these fast-fashion brands for incorporating other brands’ logos and designs into their clothing and accessories. The fast-fashion companies sell the copied items for significantly less money than their original market value. While this can make the concept of luxury brands more accessible to the general public, fast-fashion companies are ripping off the hard work of many different designers, whether they design for small businesses or high-end luxury brands. Fashion Nova, arguably one of the most prominent players in the fast-fashion industry, has been the subject of many of these lawsuits over the past few years from many brands including Adidas and Playboy.
The fast-fashion industry works to create clothing quickly that matches current fashion trends and does so at a low, affordable cost for consumers. As a result, there has been an increase in desire for fast-fashion companies to pull inspiration from both popular brands and small businesses. Unfortunately for fashion designers, neither copyright law nor trademark law effectively protect original designs, which makes copying another company’s designs significantly easier. Trademark law, however, provides greater protections for designers than copyright law, which led to trademark complaints against Fashion Nova.
One of the most prominent trademark issues Fashion Nova faced occurred in Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. v. Fashion Nova. Most people know Playboy both by the company’s bunny logo and its associated bunny costumes. Playboy has worked with many different fast-fashion companies, including Missguided, a fast-fashion retailer based in the UK and owned by Shein, to produce brand items on a large and more affordable scale for consumers. However, Playboy does not maintain the same deal with Fashion Nova as it does with Missguided. In Playboy Enterprises International, Inc., Playboy sued Fashion Nova for selling a version of its trademark bunny costume and naming the costume “Bunny of the Month” after Playboy’s trademarked “Playmate of the Month.” Even though these costumes appear to directly reproduce Playboy’s trademark clothing items, trademark law did not protect Playboy, resulting in a settlement between Playboy and Fashion Nova. Fashion Nova is still allowed and continues to sell many different versions of these costumes on its website at lower prices for consumers.
Large companies such as Playboy are more likely to be able to accept settlements from fast-fashion companies like Fashion Nova. Unfortunately, Fashion Nova copies more than just large companies. Small businesses affected by trademark infringement issues may struggle to afford large lawsuits that are not guaranteed to have a positive result. Additionally, growing luxury brands such as Hanifa struggle with the same issues. As a result, growing companies have had to find other solutions to their problem. In 2022, Fashion Nova was put on blast for recreating clothing designed by Anifa Mvuemba, the founder and creative director of Hanifa. Mvuemba took to Twitter addressing the issue without naming Fashion Nova, but the designer’s loyal customers discovered the copied dress and expressed their frustrations on the internet. As one might expect, the internet was more effective at getting the company to remove the stolen design from the market. The public’s commentary resulted in Fashion Nova removing the recreated dress from its website and Mvuemba’s dress selling out on the Hanifa website.
However, Fashion Nova is not the only fast-fashion company taking designs from other designers. In 2023, Shein was accused of replicating exact designs originally created by multiple different designers. The company has used a large range of designs including clothing, homeware, and accessories. Similar to Fashion Nova, because of the lack of protections afforded to designs by trademark law and the utility aspect of clothing, Shein has been able to get away with using other designs. Shein, like many other fast-fashion companies, has allegedly stolen designs from a wide range of small and large designers.
The trend of fast-fashion companies stealing designs from a large range of designers begs the question of whether stolen designs will dissuade new and potential fashion designers from attempting to enter the market. Alternatively, the country may see an influx in trademark and copyright applications in addition to a push for stronger limits on utilizing another company’s designs.