No Filter: Duplicated designs affect the businesses of city designers
When we talk about fast fashion, many think of brands like Zara or H and M, etc.
By : migrator
Update: 2019-05-17 16:44 GMT
Chennai
However, every time you buy a saree for Rs 500 with a cool print, you should know that it was probably ripped off from a designer’s creation and made for substantially less than 90 per cent of the original value.
A family friend bought a saree and saw my face on the poster and sent me the photo with great happiness. It was a designer campaign I shot six months ago that has caught the eyes of manufacturers, who have not only mass produced the design, but also used our pictures without consent.
Swathi Purushothaman of Studio 149 says there is very little one can do about this and finds it flattering that one’s designs are being universally liked. There are several factories that have ripped off her own wedding lehenga that she designed for her big day and are using her picture to sell it for less than one-twentieth of the original value. What irks her is that people are lifting her images and photoshopping different faces onto them and applying their watermarks to use them on social media to attract clients. Many weeks go into planning these shoots and designing each blouse, saree, lehenga etc. For someone, especially another designer, to so callously lift the same design and then style a celebrity in them, is what dents their market.
Designer Anju Shankar, who has faced the same issue, tells that she once had a client buy a saree for a fraction of the price from an online website and found the quality to be substandard and then asked for a refund. What can one do but laugh at the absurdity of this situation. It is sad when creative industries are plagued by copycats, who profit off of others’ creativity. Why not just hire the designer to design for you? I guess ‘cheap and best’ is the motto of these copycats and they have a massive audience.
When a client walks in with a picture of someone else’s creation, both Swathi and Anju refuse to remake it for them. I think that’s the best solution. They either redirect the client or offer to make a custom design with a similar vibe. There are other designers practicing the same, but the only way to combat designer copycats and educate clients is when this becomes the industry standard.
Model Pradaini Surva to make her film debut
The upcoming film Bodhai Yeri Budhi Maari is about the effects of intoxication, featuring debutante actors and directors. The film has been the talk of the town as it is the debut film of Pradaini Surva. She is a popular model with a huge fan base on social media. Why everyone is talking about this project is because Pradaini has always maintained that she doesn’t want to act and refused many offers till date. So, I had to find out what changed her mind.
“In retrospect, I think I always wanted to act, but my apprehensions about how it will be received were holding me back,” she tells me.
So how did she overcome it this time? It is a combination of several factors. One can also never underestimate the power of a person, and in this case, it is the film producer Sri Pentela, who hadn’t met Pradaini, but knew about her from social media. The director happens to be an ex-cabin crew just like her, so it is safe to say the stars have finally aligned. I could hear the excitement in her voice as this conversation was filled with a lot of squeals! The posters are up at a popular movie theatre in the city and wishes are already pouring in from family, friends and her well-wishers. Pradaini credits her director for her interest in the film, as his first narration of the script got her hooked.
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