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Yesterday evening I discovered that I either had an extremely good eye for new trends or that Zara really appreciate one of my designs… In any case I admit it is quite flattering!

Now the question is… do you see any similarities between the two dresses or am I just another victim of the “pretentious fashion designer paranoia syndrome” ? (when the patient believes that everyone is copying his style)

The first dress on the left is from the new Zara 2011 spring summer collection, 100% polyester and sold for 79,95 euro.

The second dress on the right is the one I designed last year. It is made of silk and leather… I wore it for my photo shoot with the Belgian Elle magazine in November after which I did a post about it’s creation process (here).

Of course we all know that Zara’s only life purpose is to suck out ideas from famous brands such as Celine (here) and more recently Prada (here). They also became famous last year for a blatant act of copy/paste with a picture from famous blogger Betty Autier “Le blog de Betty“.

Unfortunately this is how the fashion world works, everybody gets inspired by each other and everything gets renewed. But my issue is that even though copying is a widely performed act in the fashion industry, there is still a difference between copying a big brand and a small emerging designer. Not that one is better than the other but…

While Prada might be upset seeing all their stripped sombreros and skirts in the windows of the Zara boutiques. The Prada client is more likely to remain loyal to the brand as what he is looking for, in addition to a fashionable piece, is quality, durability and also maybe to own a little piece of the history linked to the brand/designer.

When you rip off a small designer, you’re taking away from him a client base that he didn’t even had time to build or secure. And more importantly you are taking away from him serious money  ($$;) that he will definitely need to grow his business further. And when you start, let me tell you that every cent counts. Obviously this also applies to big names such as Louis Vuitton for example, but when you know that last year the LVMH group did 3.032 billions of profit, suddenly, you get less worried for them… (Yes yes you read well… billions not millions!).

So to conclude I would only say this:

Dear Zara,
Thanks for visiting my blog, but please do forward me the address of your copy, hum I mean, design studio. So next time I can send you my sketches directly… it will save you some time 😉

Warm regards…

V.