Forever 21 Allegedly Steals Yet Another Company's Design

Forever 21 was accused Thursday of allegedly stealing and selling the intellectual property designed by Word, a Los Angeles-based public relations agency. Word's founders, Zoila Darton and Angela Carrasco, intended to use the shirt's profits to aid Planned Parenthood (PPH). Twenty-five percent of the profits from each sale would go towards funding PPH.

The T-Shirt was first created in July. Word, however, discovered a design similar to its shirt on Forever 21's website Thursday. The public relation's agency took to Instagram to share a side-by-side post of its "Creator" T-shirt and the competing shirt sold by Forever 21.

"We're not ones to point fingers but this looks mighty familiar. For the record, we created this shirt with a purpose. Too bad they removed the Swahili, Arabic, Hebrew & Japanese," Word wrote on Instagram Thursday.

The two shirts share some similarities, but there are also visible differences. Forever 21 removed some of the foreign translations of "woman," it used different font styles and rearranged the ordering of the words.

"Forever 21 decided they liked the design we created at WORD to raise money for Planned Parenthood," Darton wrote on Facebook. "If you see this shirt in the windows of this shit store — do not purchase this cheap knockoff of an idea I created over a year ago and executed with my brilliant designer husband."

Word received thousands of orders on its graphic T-shirt following the controversy.

A representative from Word and Forever 21 did not immediately respond to International Business Times' request for comment.

This was not the first time Forever 21 came under fire for allegedly replicating and selling designs that aren't their own. Forever 21 suffered several copyright or trademark lawsuits over the years by either taking ideas from graphic designers or even other big-name retailers. However, the retailer has managed to depart several incidents unscathed.

H&M sued Forever 21 in September 2015 for allegedly copying its "Beach Please" bag design. The lawsuit detailed that Forever 21 was guilty of copyright infringement over a bag H&M began selling in stores April 2014. H&M's lawsuit, which was handled in a New York federal court, claimed the design has gained "secondary meaning in that H&M is recognized as the original source of the tote bags," according to The Fashion Law.

Up-and-coming graphic designers face challenges when rising to success. However, this becomes much harder when their artistic property is stolen by major retailers. Sam Larson, a freelance graphic designer, allegedly had his designs ripped-off by Forever 21 in 2015. Larson, who claims to have his work stolen frequently, told BuzzFeed, "I put so much time and effort into my work to try to make it as freelance artist and then companies do this".

Forever 21 isn't the only well-known retailer to receive criticism for reportedly stealing designs. Urban Outfitters was accused by Soares, a designer who sells his work on various websites like Society 6, for using his designs in a mini-skirt in 2014, according to Huffington Post. Zara also came under fire for copyright infringement in 2016. Tuesday Bassen, a designer who has previously worked with Nike and Urban Outfitters, noticed several of her designs were being stolen and sold by Zara.