You Thought I Wouldn't Notice

Ok, have a look at the link first, then come back.  I'll wait.
http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/have-a-heart-hot-topic/

The designer, BeatBlack, is a friend of a friend.  I'm really disturbed that this seems to be a growing trend with fashion companies.  Hot Topic, Urban OutShitters, and I'm sure there are more I can't think of right now. Having experienced this myself, I empathize with how pissed BeatBlack must be, and how helpless she must feel. Hot Topic: Can stealing work (and then ultimately tarnishing the company reputation when you get caught) REALLY be cheaper and easier than hiring the original artist or buying/ licensing the design?  Most artists would probably be glad to make a deal if you approached them, and would probably accept far less than they deserve because they don't know any better. However, take away our credit and the internet will bitch slap you sideways!  I wish I had known about the YTWWN site a few years ago, and think all artists making merchandise/ fashion would do well to bookmark that site.

Back in March of 2010 I was working with a small apparel company on a line of monster hoodies.  Thankfully, I had the forethought to make them significantly different from my Wumpling designs so the lines would remain separate (you'll see why in a bit).  Since my client didn't have the resources to send the hoodies into production herself, she felt our best bet was to make a deal with a larger company, who would then also serve as the distributer.  She arranged a meeting with none other than Hot Topic.

Now, when I was shopping at Hot Topic in the mid-late 90's, it was still kinda awesome.  It was the type of place your parents would be scared to go in, and they'd automatically hate anything you bought there.   Perhaps this was all part of their marketing strategy; using rebellion to entice youngsters away from the pleated front comfort of the Gap and Old Navy.
There were also very few store locations, making it something of a treat.  We had to drive at least an hour to find the nearest Hot Topic. It was a beacon of all things dark and spikey in the middle of the Iowa cornfields; a consumer haven for the weirdos, metal heads, psuedo goths, confused teenage wiccans, and tiny punk rockers who lived in the middle of nowhere and had no other source for counter culture goods.

These days, you can barely leave the house without stumbling into a Hot Topic.  In fact, I think a new one just sprang up in my bathroom as I was writing this.  I better go move all my hair extensions before the cashier tries to lodge them into her white girl dreads.
I'm completely unclear as to whether the brand still considers itself counter culture, or "all about the music".  They do sell neon colored Nicki Minaj t-shirts, but I feel like that doesn't count.  Any time I dare venture in, some 12yr old snot wearing skinny jeans is ordering his mom to buy him stuff while she wades apprehensively through the spray on hair color and Teen Disney corsets.  I don't know if that last one exists, but I think it's a mere board room meeting away from reality.
Licensing the shit out of anything that was on tv in the 80's and selling it to kids too young to know the reference has certainly succeeded in making HT a huge corporation, exponentially giving less and less of a shit about what their image and audience are.

STOP IT!  You were a zygote when this was on.  You don't know shit about Scrooge McDuck!

Now, back to spring 2010.  My client pitched the designs to the buyers at HT, who expressed a very professionally restrained interest.  "We like it, but let's wait until the back to school season."  Months went by, and the line was pushed back to a christmas release. When Christmas came and went, and our phone calls went unreturned, my client tried to console me by saying that sometimes companies just flake and that even good ideas get tossed by the wayside.  She also expressed a complete apathy for the situation, having been through it several times before, and said I could do whatever I wanted with the work but would be doing so on my own.  I was bummed that the HT project was dead.  However, at least I had the comfort of knowing a dead project where no money had changed hands meant my work was still my own, seeing as I did copyright all the original sketches and had the design files. Right?  Right.

Early file with two color options.

Little did I know that the project was not, in fact, dead at all, and that I would be meeting the zombie mass produced version of my creation very soon.
December 2010, killing time at the mall over x-mas break.  I saw this on the Hot Topic racks and just about killed everyone in the food court when my mind exploded.

Look familiar??

I'm always a little ashamed to admit that I had to buy this to get it.  I mentioned to the girl behind the counter that I was the designer and she seemed to believe me, but was unable to offer any kind of employee discount in the situation of freelance/ theft.  I spent the next hour composing a professional yet firm letter to their CEO (google has everyone's email address, if you have a little time and a lot of crazy), basically asking "How the FUCK did this happen?"

Their initial response seemed favorable; concise and concerned. Since then, I have found that "This news is very disturbing to us and we will look in the matter as quickly as possible" is more of a stock response, translation: "Oh shit.  She found us."

Within a day, I received an email from the designer formally credited with my work.  She was also working for a third party, who Hot Topic contracts.  To be clear, she may very well have had no idea the design was stolen.  She may have been given a few visuals or maybe even a description and simply told to make it happen.  It just so happens that what happened ended up looking an awful lot like the drawings of mine that Hot Topic had seen previously.  The designer sent me a massive train of design files to support the "natural and coincidental" evolution of her hoodie, though none of them were dated.  Her case was that we had arrived at similar things around the same time, entirely independently. We probably could have gone back and forth for a long time about who added what element first, but since she had the support of a company behind her, it didn't seem worth the trouble.  Their lawyers would eat my lawyer alive, then use his skin to make screen printed teen apparel.

Once in a while I see a Hot Topic product with a little too much coincidental Ashley monster flavor and it gets my brain churning.  Is it derivative? Maybe there's just that much monster stuff out there right now.  The sad thing is I'll probably never know, or get paid if I ever find out. While none of these sightings have been similar enough to pursue legally, I take them as reminders to remain vigilant, maintain control of my own designs at all times (no more third party runaround), and declare my copyrights loudly and proudly, for all the web to see.  In the interest of that last one, here's the only hoodie design of the original 3 that HT hasn't sourced from yet.

  Breath in that fresh creativity, HT, and while you're at it, note the date stamp on the image.