Jackie Danicki

Hello Kitty fashion, Les Galeries Lafayette

Originally uploaded by dynamist.

You can see a hand in motion on the left side of the photo; that’s a shop assistant at Les Galeries Lafayette freaking out at me for taking a picture. It seems that, with this photograph, I could steal the innovative designs (a plain t-shirt with Hello Kitty’s face in the middle) on display. Do they make their customers sign a vow not to take pictures of themselves wearing the things?

As you may have guessed, I think most ‘intellectual property’ hoo-ha is irrational and useless. So I was somewhat unyielding when the shop assistant demanded I show her the photo I had taken. I also refused to delete it. I think she could tell that I meant it, and so ‘let’ me walk away without calling security.

I did feel a bit bad for Antoine, who would go pretty far to have a quiet life, but he did agree with me. “You should buy a bunch of those tops and send them to loads of counterfeiters,” he said. “And because you’re not making any money out of it, they couldn’t prosecute you.” The fact is, though, that there is no ‘design’ to copy here. If there was, I’m sure the actual counterfeiters would send someone in to buy at least one genuine article from which to make a copy.

Harassing customers for taking pictures of your cute display counter does nothing to combat ‘intellectual property’ ‘theft’. It just pisses them off and makes them blog (and Flickr) about how nasty you train your staff to be.

Filed under: Life