Step forward, Charlotte Russe, you of the cheap clothes and “buy one pair of shoes, get the second pair for $10″ offers. You have been accused of taking “inspiration” from other brands a little too literally, and we’d like to know how you plead.
First, the evidence:
Christian Louboutin Vs Charlotte Russe
Valentino Vs Charlotte Russe
Miu Miu Vs Charlotte Russe
Pierre Hardy Vs Charlotte Russe
These are just a few of the shoe copycats we found at Charlotte Russe, and, to be fair to them, none of them are exact replicas (although some are closer copies than others), and when you see them side-by-side, it’s instantly obvious which is the designer shoe and which is the copy. So CR probably aren’t going to find themselves in court over any of these. What do you think, though? Have they gone too far with the “inspiration”, especially with the more visually distinctive shoes, or is it fair game for mass-market retailers to copy designers in this kind of way, given that they’re not passing the shoes off as belonging to the designer brand, and are likely to be targeting very different areas of the market?
So, Tibi’s leather-trimmed satin-twill tuxedo jacket is kinda nice, no? Great with black skinnies, pencil dresses, jeans… an easy way to dress-up an outfit, just by throwing on a jacket. Awesome!
“But Fashion Police,” we hear you cry, “It’s $495! How can we be expected to pay $495 for a jacket? We will have to starve, or make ourselves homeless because we spent our rent money on a designer blazer, woe is us!”
Don’t worry, though, help is at hand! You SHALL have a white tuxedo blazer, Cinders! You shall have one from…
Can you spot the difference between these two shoes, readers?
Nope, we can’t either. In fact, a few subtle shade variations (which could easily be explained by differences in photography and lighting) aside, we don’t think there are any. The only difference, then, would seem to be the brand names – ASOS and Jessica Simpson – and the price points: the ASOS shoes are £75 and the Jessica Simpson ones are $78, which works out at around £56.
Looks like someone’s been a bit naughty on the “inspiration” front, then, but who is it? Well, Shoeperwoman wrote about the Jessica Simpson shoes last month, and the ASOS version only appeared on the site last week, so we initially suspected ASOS of being the guilty party. The copy seems SO blatant, though, that it doesn’t really seem like ASOS – in fact, we were so confused by it that we actually contacted them on Twitter to ask if the shoe they have listed as “ASOS Handfull” is actually by Jessica Simpson, and they’ve just neglected to add the brand name to the product description. (We know, it doesn’t seem likely, and they don’t normally stock shoes by JSim, but hey, benefit of the doubt and all that.) We’ve yet to receive a response, but we’ll update if we do.
In the meanwhile, what do you think: is this taking “inspiration” a little too far, or are you so used to this kind of thing now that it doesn’t really bother you?
Actually, it’s OK, you can sit back down: there’s really no case to be answered here – this is a straightforward case of “designer inspiration” as opposed to “blatant copying”, and while you can clearly see where the inspiration from this Mango dress has come from, there are enough differences between it and the Stella McCartney original to make it very obvious which is which.
Unfortunately for Mango, the side-by-side comparison doesn’t really do their creation any favours. We’re sure it probably looks nice on, but next to the Stella, it does look a little… well, cheap, really.
IS it cheap? Well, it’s £34.90, so we’d say yes, it is. As for the McCartney dress, you’ll pay £1285 for the privilege: ouch.
Good old Zara! The Spanish chain comes to the rescue once again, helping us save £478, were we in the market for a two-toned skirt with white panels at the front and black ones at the side. If we WERE looking for such a thing, we could buy it from Dries Van Noten. It would cost us £504, though, so we have to admit, we’d be much more likely to head to Zara, spend £25.99 and still have enough left for a top and shoes to wear with it, and maybe some lunch while we were out.
The Zara skirt is currently sold out on the website, but can be found on eBay (where you can probably expect to pay more than £25.99), or in-store, if you’re lucky. If you just can’t find it anywhere, though, well, you could always cough up £500 for the designer version, here.
Even the least fashion-savvy amongst us would probably be able to tell these two dresses apart: there’s just no disguising a Roland Mouret, is there? Unfortunately for us, however, there’s just no way of paying for one either, so until our Fairy Godmother comes along to wave her magic wand, we’ll just have to content ourselves with this ASOS version of Mouret’s famous pleat neck dress. Well, the ASOS version is only £45, you see, and the Mouret is no longer available, and even if it was, it’s not like we’d be able to afford it on a police officer’s salary, so ASOS it is!
There’s one problem, though: the Mouret dress is from the Spring/Summer 2006 collection, so wearing it will probably cause fashion victims to look down their noses and declare it to be “SO last season!” Annoying fashion victims is one of our favourite hobbies, though, so we’d actually see that as a plus…
The ASOS dress is also available in blue and yellow: click here if you want to buy one.
Pictures of Freida Pinto looking gorgeous in a pale pink dress on Jimmy Fallon earlier this week had our officers sratching their heads for a second, and thinking, “Wait… is she wearing… Closet?”
Of course, she wasn’t. Freida was, in fact, wearing a dress from Victoria Beckham’s Spring/Summer 2011 collection, which, like the rest of the Victoria Beckham line, is beautiful, but not exactly realistically priced for those of us who aren’t on celebrity salaries. Most of the dress collection, for instance, retails from £900 – £1,500, with some pieces costing more.
Enter Closet, with their pink asymmetric neck dress, which… look, we’re not going to beat around the bush, here: it’s damn near identical, isn’t it? In fact, we can’t spot a single difference, other than the one on the price tag, which, while we’re on the subject, is £27 down from the original £45 at A|Wear.
So, what do you think, Fashion Jurors? Would you buy Victoria Beckham or Closet? Or would you buy neither?
Shoeperwoman spotted this case of Shoe Deja Vu for us: the shoes on the left of the image above are Charlotte Olympia’s ‘Bananas is My Business’ platform pumps, the ones on the right are Jeffrey Campbell’s Fruit Bowl shoes, and while it’s true to say that one is never going to be mistaken for the other, with the JC version looking inferior in every way, it’s also true to say that the fruit placement is so identical (melon on the toe, bananas on the side, strawberries on the heel) as to make simple coincidence seem highly unlikely.
Valentino Vs Charlotte Russe
Miu Miu Vs Charlotte Russe
Pierre Hardy Vs Charlotte Russe
