Forever 21 has been exposed by Los Angeles-based agency Word for copying a t-shirt created the agency sold in part to help raise funds for Planned Parenthood.
Word founders, Angela Carrasco and Zoila Darton, spoke with jezebel.com and said they first started selling the t-shirt in late July. The t-shirt features the word “woman” in nine different languages, each written with a distinctly different font. The word “creator” sits at the bottom of the t-shirt, which was used in part to raise funds for Planned Parenthood.
Yesterday (September 14, 2017) Carrasco and Darton were tipped off about a copycat version of the shirt on Forever 21’s website. Like it does, Forever 21 slightly modified the t-shirt, removing the Swahili, Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese words for woman.
As of today (September 15th), the t-shirt is not on Forever 21’s website so it may have already been taken down, which is what the Los Angeles-based chain always does when these events occur. According to a Forbes article written in 2009, the company at that time had been sued over 50 times for copyright infringement so receiving complaints about copied designs is a part of who it does business.
It should be pointed out while Forever 21 has a small design team, for the most part it purchases from outside vendors so there’s a very big chance it bought the design as part of a massive order of goods with no idea it included stolen design ideas.
The extra irony is that Forever 21’s owner, Do Won (Don) Chang is a born-again Christian, an identity expressed on the stores bags, which are printed with the bible verse John 3:16. Articles written about the chain discuss the “alleged” presence of bibles in headquarters, but there’s nothing alleged about it because we know someone who’s worked with the chain and has seen the bibles with her own two eyes.
Such is the suckage of progressive moments becoming mainstream among youthful populations. The message becomes a method to sell product and make a buck. Unfortunately, the opportunity for legit organizations to raise funds gets drained away and women’s ability to control their own agency and fertility remains hotly debated.
