Crimson Reflections

Because sometimes the world is too complex for black and white

The Complicated Ethics of Design Replicas

In fashion, the design of a garment can not be copyrighted. This means that if I was a fashion designer and I invent a fancy new coat silhouette on Monday, show it on the runway on Tuesday and it’s copied by a sweatshop on Wednesday, I can do nothing about it legally, as long as the company mass producing it doesn’t claim it’s genuine MyBrandLabel. I remember one season where I bought a fast fashion jacket at Target with some ruffles on it, and then saw an identical jacket with different buttons at 3 other fast fashion stores in the same week. A designer had shown it on the runway, and everyone copied. And this is legal.

There are, however, a few things that are protected by law: logos and brand names can be trademarked, and textile prints can be copyrighted as art. Copyright on textiles is automatic just like other fine art, it doesn’t need to be registered, however, it’s necessary to register a work if you are going to sue someone over it in the US.

You also can’t copyright an idea. So if I have the idea of opening a cat cafe / ice cream parlor and I do it and it’s really rough, like I’m eating ramen every night because that’s all I can afford kind of rough, but I stick with it for the dream, and then it goes viral and everything’s great…. and then someone else copies the idea, steals all my customers and makes millions… I can’t really do anything about that legally.

So how does this fit in with lolita? Most lolita brands, even the ones you know well, are very small companies. Interviews with designers have basically said, time and time again that this is something you have to love if you are going to do it. Lolita designers don’t get rich off of designing lolita.

So, when a brand designs a shoe, or a dress or a coat, and it’s popular and does well, so well that they can keep re-making it and it still sells, that’s a big deal to these small companies. Any time something can be re-released, it saves time and money and something that is a guaranteed sale is great as far as risk goes.

Heart Buckle Shoes + Brand Logos
Left Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Right Bodyline.

But sometimes, another company comes along, takes the idea and replicates it. This is legal, sure. But it’s taking someone else’s idea without asking and duplicating it. In some cases, like with the 6% doki doki star clips that Chocomint copied, the replica becomes better known than the original.

And I own things like this; I own chocomint star clips along side 6% doki doki ones. I own shoes that were likely “inspired” by other shoes and blouses that were likely “inspired” by other blouses. The lolita market is full of items like this, some identical to their inspiration, and others showing another designer’s take on the concept. To a degree, we consider this pretty normal, and in the fast fashion world, especially, it is. It’s also very common for less expensive or items with a larger size range to be copy-cat items.

Ekaterina OP

That said, this is Mary Magdalene’s Ekaterina OP. It’s one of the most widely copied lolita dress designs.

On one hand, Mary Magdalene barely ever releases clothing anymore, so it’s very hard to obtain this piece legitimately.

And even if you do obtain a legitimate Mary Magdalene Ekaterina OP, it’s a set size.

Availability, price and sizing makes this dress not accessible to a large number of people, and legally, there is no reason why they can’t have someone make them a copy in their size and/or at their price point.

But, on the other hand, Mary Magdalene is a tiny, tiny company.

I’d like to share a passage from the 2011 paper Lolita: Dreaming, Despairing, Defying by Terasa Younker. The author worked as a shop clerk at Baby the Stars Shine Bright and in the offices of Mary Magdalene in 2010 as part of their research. Earlier in the paper, they explain that Mary Magdalene has 4 employees: The CEO, a single designer and two “young employees”. Here is how the writer describes the two brands:

When traveling to my first interview I was rather confused when the address I had been given led me to a dingy Osaka neighborhood literally straddled between two sets of train tracks. The only buildings in the area were shabby old apartment and condominium complexes. Having spent most of my time in Japan in immaculate Kyoto I was rather disconcerted. I looked at the condominium complex, then back at the address I had been given to see that they did indeed match. I carefully approached the entrance and to my relief saw “Mary Magdalene 3F” written in katakana on one of the mailboxes.

After being buzzed in I rode a dingy elevator to the third floor and was led by a young woman, whom I would later learn was the designer Tanaka Reiko, to a tiny kitchen that had been converted into an office. I had dressed in a suit for the interview, but Tanaka herself wore a classy but plain jumper. They can’t be making a lot of money, I thought to myself.

Working at Mary on a weekly basis I realized that the spirit of thriftiness I had experienced at that first interview extended to every part of their operation. Despite the illusion of luxury exhibited in their products there was no room for extravagance on the business end. They would usually only produce around 50 of each item, but each item would be impeccable. A staff member would personally inspect each product, remove lose threads, and iron it before it shipped out. The staff salaries were quite low. The starting salary at the time was JP¥700 an hour (US$8), and even the CEO could not have been making much. He ate sack lunches, shopped for used clothing, and rode his bike to work every day.

Although Baby has larger operations than Mary, they encounter similarly high production costs and rely mostly on staff dedication to make ends meet. There were moments when I was amazed they could afford to stay in business ,and it was clear that everyone working there, including the CEO and designers, were not in it for the money. Although the company spent considerable sums on marketing and goodies for their customers, they kept their labor costs very low. The average salary for a shop staffer was JP¥800 (US$9) an hour, and the highest paid workers were only paid JP¥1000 (US$10). These girls’ frugality was astonishing. It was as if these girls lived and breathed for the clothes. Although some of them still lived at home with their parents, the majority of staff I met and worked with lived on their own and supported themselves. Even with a steep staff discount the clothes at Baby were expensive, but the girls
would buy an item they liked even if it meant their cell-phone service was cut, which actually happened once or twice when I was there.

Lolita: Dreaming, Despairing, Defying by Terasa Younker

The picture this paints, of 4 people working in a dingy apartment is miles away from what I think a lot of people imagine when they imagine lolita brands in Japan.

Mary Magdalene has a statement on their site, that talks about their work being copied and how upset they are about it. This part in particular sticks out:

また、こちらのサイトにて画像及びデザイン等を無断で使用している件に
つきましては、弊社では大変遺憾に感じており、
直接何度も苦情等を行っておりますが、対応して頂けず、
他国という事もあり、弊社としては対応に苦慮している現状で御座います。

コピー品・類似品について

Which basically says they are upset that their designs and photos are being stolen, and they have directly contacted Milanoo, etc, about it, but because it’s overseas they can’t really [afford] to do anything about it.

Mary Magdalene hasn’t produced much at all in the last couple years, and I can’t help but wonder if the proliferation of copy-cat Mary Magdalene items at half or less of the price is a significant factor in this. When it’s a passion project, it’s easy for discouraging things to dampen the passion. Recently, they did a collaboration where they were having items manufactured and it fell through due to quality control issues.

I think there is a huge demand in the lolita community for good, strong design work, and I think that is an area where Mary Magdalene has always excelled. But at the same time, I think there is a large segment of the community who wants the design work of the “masters” so to speak, but they aren’t interested in the price point those items come at.

Realistically, I don’t see Mary Magdalene existing as a brand anymore at all in 5-10 years. It’s not entirely clear if they even consider themselves to still be active right now. The interview above was 9 years ago, and they seem to be skipping this season, and it won’t be the first season they have produced nothing, or least, nothing sold online.

As for Ekaterina, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. A knock off of it is featured in the popular phone dress up game Love Nikki, and the drawing in the game has spawned cosplay costumes. Additionally, people who have never heard of Mary Magdalene, have, on multiple occasions seen knock offs of Ekaterina on Wish or Amazon and posted them to Love Nikki groups on various platforms. An Ekaterina knock off has also been sold as a bagged Halloween costume.

If Mary Magdalene only made 50 copies of the dress, even with multiple re-releases, I’m certain that knock-offs have outsold the original dresses many times over. There is something deeply ironic about a piece made by a brand with hyper stringent quality control becoming an iconic example of an “ita” cosplay lolita dress.

Plastering a piece with logos or custom art can help minimize this effect, but it only goes so far. After all, Innocent World released a cute sailor JSK with their name and some little wings embroidered across the back of the collar for 19,800 yen… and Bodyline immediately knocked it off, simply omitting the embroidery and changing how many stripes there were in different areas. It’s weirdly listed on the bodyline site twice, at different price points right now [1] [2], and it’s not clear why, though I suspect it’s because they have already re-stocked it once, and the cheaper one is remainders of the first run. Either way, it’s listed at a max price of 5,499 yen, but one of the listings is as cheap as 947 yen. That’s basically $9. How many pieces of the same thing do you have to sell that you can afford to sell a piece for $9 and run a brick and mortar shop with employees? Even at the higher $30 price point on the other listing, that’s incredibly cheap.

At the end of the day, I think we have to ask ourselves, why do we love lolita? And if part of what we love about it is the design work of the talented designers behind some of the most influential lolita fashion labels, then I think we need to seriously think about if it’s ethical or not to buy knock off versions of their designs, and what that will mean long-term when it comes to the longevity of some of these brands.

12 comments on “The Complicated Ethics of Design Replicas

  1. I really liked this post! It’s interesting to try and imagine how the fashion industry and fashion trend evolution would even function without the ability to legally make design replicas.

    1. And that’s a really big thing too, even the “big” brands seem to get inspired by each other, or the same source material, or stumble upon the same combinations from time to time (after all, how many ways are there to make a sailor JSK?). I think if we went to the opposite extreme, there would be a lot of accidental problems and it would stifle things for sure.

  2. I would personally love to support Mary Magdalene but the probability of them making any dresses for plus sized lolitas are slim to none. Their hard set focus on only petite sizes is more of a hurdle than the price point in my opinion.

    1. They have made two pieces with full body shirring that I could track, the Fleur OP (which had two versions, plain and floral) and the Poppy Ribbon OP. The one dress I own from them is partially shirred and that shirring is a lot more forgiving than I’d ever imagine. So if you’re on the smaller end of plus size (or mroe like plus size by Japanese standards, not Western), you may fit into the partially shirred pieces, of which there are a few more.

      1. Just to add onto this, I have the 2003 Fleur OP (https://lolibrary.org/items/mary-magdalene-fleur-op) and I can attest that it’s pretty generous for old Japanese brand, though the neck is pretty deep of a scoop if you catch my drift… I don’t know if I’ve ever measured it, but it would fit a 5’3″ US Women’s size L person. I don’t think it would go particularly larger than that though, like it’s not true western plus sized and it does get short.

        But like, at the same time, full shirring is full shirring. And while I get why it’s the option, I also understand why/how some people might not be super excited about fully shirred dresses because, let’s be real, they aren’t the most flattering option ever.

  3. Once again, this is the thoughtful and thought inviting post that I love and want to plaster everywhere for everyone to read. In my earlier years in the fashion I certainly almost fell into the ‘master’s work at an amateur’s price’ way of thinking. I’m glad that it didn’t go very far and that I matured in my thinking, but there’s no denying that, like many others, I did think that way and probably did some harm. These days I aim to avoid design replicas for that very reason. I keep what I have already bought, ideally hoping to use it until it falls apart, but I am much more careful about what I buy now, particularly in terms of shoes and bags, which are the most common traps. I’ve seen lolita attitudes shun design replicas of dresses, but be lenient towards shoes and bags – and while I understand it, I personally would feel better avoiding a double standard like this.

    Also, what you wrote about Mary Magdalene’s production quantities, not only makes so much sense, but puts that brand in a new light for me. I only own one piece from them, which is already highly treasured, but now I will endeavour to treasure it even more and won’t complain when I see what Mary Magdalene retails for in the second hand market. It is a shame that they are not able to continue, because their designs were stunning, but I agree with you that they wouldn’t last in the current market anyway. It is probably best that they don’t try to re-emerge because for all the talk withinthe community, the handful who would put their money where their mouth is and pay likely wouldn’t be enough to sustain the brand anyway.

  4. So my favorite doll customizing YouTuber Dollightful made a long sleeve OP version of this dress in doll sizing in her Macaroons video. She’s selling the patterns online, I want to make a human sized version of the dress and the original Mary Magdalene dress would not fit me in a million years. How different you have to make the cut to not infringe on Mary Magdalene? Lolita cuts often look somewhat alike.

    1. So something I didn’t really get into in the post is that many brands have released dress patterns for home sewing. That is, if you want to make your own copy for your own personal use (not for sale), many brands are OK with that. There are official brand patterns in the Gothic Lolita Bible books and there are also some dedicated pattern books like GosuRori that have patterns that the editors have made or that brands have made for the books. I haven’t looked at any of the pattern books recently and I really can’t recall if anything similar to this particular dress is in any of them. Offhand, I can say that I don’t think MM actually put any patterns out in the GLB, but I don’t know if that was because they simply didn’t want to expend that time and effort, or if they weren’t ok with the idea of home sewers making their items themselves, or if they were too small for the editors of the GLB to ask them, I don’t know enough about it to say.

      A list of the GLB patterns is here: https://egl.livejournal.com/19906810.html
      (There might be a more up to date one somewhere, I feel like someone was asking me about what was in different books, but it might have been that long ago…)

      In general, though, I would saying sewing for personal use is a lot less of a problem than stuff that is for sale. People who sew their own clothing are a small percentage of the lolita community, and I think it’s probably pretty uncommon for someone to actively sew something they otherwise would have bought. Usually, people sew their own items because they love it and want a particular color/cut/size/etc that isn’t out there, or because they want to save money by using their skill and time, instead of someone else’s skill and time (which is absolutely a legitimate thing).

      I would personally suggest making some changes to the design, just to make it your own, but I don’t think there really is a hard line that we can quantify between what is inspired and what is a direct copy. That said, usually my rule of thumb is if someone looks at it, and assumes it’s a specific dress from MM, that might be a little close? Basically, ideally, the better situation is someone seeing a classic dress that is well made and being like “is that MM/VM?” (or “what brand is that, it’s lovely!”), versus “oh, that’s _____ dress”.

      Does that help at all? @___@

    1. Hello, I’m so sorry about the delay in replying to this, I caught the flu from a coworker, so I’ve been a bit slow the past couple weeks. I get a TON of spam comments on every post (like hundreds), so I have comment approval turned on for everyone unless they are logged into a wordpress account that I’ve previously approved a comment from.

      Your comment wasn’t deleted (at least I assume it wasn’t since I found 2 in the approval queue), it was just pending approval. Sorry about that!

      But that said, sometimes I have mistakenly flagged a legitimate comment as spam (if it says something simple like “cool” or “nice post” it might be mistaken for a spam comment because a lot of spammers use short comments like that to get you to approve their post with their spam link in the blog field), so I do really appreciate people commenting and asking if a comment doesn’t show up.

      Again, I’m sorry about the delay!

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