Los Angeles artist Tuesday Bassen accuses Zara

Los Angeles - Local artist Tuesday Bassen has had enough. The artist took to social media to accuse retail giant Zara of plagiarism when it comes to her designs.

Last week, the illustrator posted on Instagram her designs side by side with Zara’s. There are pretty adamant similarities to the designs, and in her caption she wrote how she fought back by pleading to the retailer. “Over the past year, [Zara] has been copying my artwork,” she wrote. In her Instagram statement, she writes how she planned to press charges although she did not feel hopeful about winning “because [I’m] an indie artists and they’re a major corporation.” After gathering over 2,000 dollars in legal fees, she was able to reach out the company. “The lack of distinctiveness of your client’s purported designs makes it very hard to see how a significant part of the population anywhere in the world would associate the designs with Tuesday Bassen,” Zara responded. This could be arguable, as Tuesday Bassen has a following in Los Angeles, yet there are no numerical statistics to back this up at the moment.

I've been pretty quiet about this, until now. Over the past year, @zara has been copying my artwork (thanks to all that have tipped me off--it's been a lot of you). I had my lawyer contact Zara and they literally said I have no base because I'm an indie artist and they're a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter. I plan to further press charges, but even to have a lawyer get this LETTER has cost me $2k so far. 〰 It sucks and it's super disheartening to have to spend basically all of my money, just to defend what is legally mine. ⚡️ EDIT: Some of you are asking how you can help. Repost and tag them, on Twitter, on Insta, on Facebook. I don't want to have to burden any of you with the financial strain that comes with lawsuits.

A photo posted by Tuesday Bassen (@tuesdaybassen) on Jul 19, 2016 at 5:57pm PDT

This isn’t the first time that Zara has been accused of copying independent artists. Adam J. Kurtz, American designer and writer, started an Instagram account showing the similarities between Zara’s designs and other independent artists. So far, he’s found over 60 designs that are very similar. What will be done about this remains to be seen, as so far it seems that Bassen is the first to take legal action and Zara has yet to made any changes or proactive actions.

For more information about this, read our opinion piece on Zara’s accused theft.