GAVIN RAJAH IN ANOTHER COPYCAT SAGA

Gavin Rajah finds himself in another copy cat saga of garments. PICTURE: WEB

The Graciella Dress from Self Portrait. PICTURE: Online

Last year, this was the dress that found Gavin Rajah in trouble. PICTURE: WEB

LOCAL designer Gavin Rajah has found himself at the centre of another Twitter storm after one of his designs from the Autumn/Winter ’15 Resort Collection at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Joburg 2015 held at Melrose Arch - is said to belong to an international designer.

The white dress which was also spotted at the Veuve Cliquot Polo in Val Die Vie last weekend worn by another of his clients, has found Rajah being accused of plagiarising another designer just eight months after he faced the same battle for a replica garment by Lebanese designer Zuhair Murad.

This time though he's made a dress similar to that of Malaysian-born and UK based designer Han Chong the founder of Self Portrait.

Last year's experience reduced Rajah to say he was disappointed by the experience, so much so that he will “never do fashion week again”, but rather host his own shows. He produced sketches of the entire design process, a document detailing the inspiration behind the design and references of fans and the Japanese rising sun detail for the dress, named “rising sun fan dress".

"If I had seen that dress, I would never have put it into the collection because someone would see the association,” Rajah said back then defending the Murad dress.

But he returned his creations to the catwalks with another collection stating it was  inspired by “memories of bygone events, romances that were, the free-spirited lifestyle of the 1970’s and the music of Claudine Longet”. It was a line with 70s inspiration, featuring swimwear with retro hints, see-through swiss broderie dresses, capes, pantsuits, floral embroidered dresses and more. The models rocked chic shoes by Europa Art Shoes, adding extra glam to the entire showcase. Among this was dress that combines a flared skirt with a fitted upper bodice, and partly lined bust panels, although slight differences can be be seen in all dresses.

And again it was Twitter that lambasted Rajah, with fashionista Brett Foxcroft pointing out the similarities on Twitter, and said: "Can we get rid of Gavin Rajah now?"

But Pippa Gower, from the London-based fashion PR and communications agency Village, suggested they were not interested in getting involved in the plagiarism issue. She said: "It's not a designer we're aware of, so we'd rather not comment." 

Rajah and his team would not comment either. But when his assistant designer Stephen van Eeden posted a picture of a poster reading "Nous sommes Gavin Rajah [We are Gavin Rajah)," Rajah said: "#wearejustthatgood people will say many things. People will hate for no reason. So sorry you guys have to endure this."

In an article published in Forbes last year, British entrepreneur who founded trend-forecasting agency WGSN Marc Worth, slammed the fashion industry and designers for being "lazy".  Worth, who exited the business in 2005, says that the dependency of fashion designers on trend-forecasting services such as WGSN is hurting the industry. His latest business venture, Stylus Fashion, aims to turn this around.

“People complain that everything looks the same today, but is it any wonder? Thousands of companies are signed up to WGSN, looking at the same color forecasts, the same material swatches and the same silhouettes,” explains Worth.

“It used to be a real source of inspiration to designers, but now it’s just doing their job for them. You can download CAD [computer-aided design] drawings of a garment and just tweak it. It has made life too easy for people in the creative space; it has made them lazy.” - report by Timeslive/ Sunday World/ Forbes/ Twitter

QUESTION: Is there such a thing as copying in fashion? If not, then why are we all wearing pear-plum skirts/ skinny jeans from different labels?