Pagliacci, but Make It Plagiarism

What do you do when a brand designs a derivative work based on an image of your toddler without your permission?

Yesterday evening I was scrolling instagram and I get served an ad for embroidered patchwork pants by Samuel Zelig on Revolve. Cute, I initially thought, and clicked the ad.

I scrolled to the third photo of the pants and was immediately taken aback. Wait a second... that’s… an embroidered image of… my daughter in her homemade halloween costume… on a pair of pants???

Ok, and now I am seeing the same embroidered image on their hoodie too? (Mind you, these pants cost a whopping $390 and hoodie $440.) Surely, this is not coincidence. The head tilt is the same, the placement of the stars and moons on the handmade halloween costume I designed and made from scratch is the exact same. The proportions are the same. Even the fabric folds are the same. I immediately knew it was virtually identical to a photo I had taken of my daughter in her halloween costume when she was only a mere 1 1/2 years old.

Her face on the embroidery had been turned into a clown caricature’s face (more on theme I suppose) but the rest was undeniable - it was completely taken from my photo.

So I did what any normal designer does. I did an overlay - the embroidered clown on top of the photo of my toddler daughter. Yup, undeniable. My copyrighted image of my toddler had been morphed into an embroidery and sold for profit on pants and hoodies without my consent.

A little background. For months in 2023, I brainstormed, moodboarded, designed and ultimately made by hand on my daughter’s halloween costume. A complete original take on a classic clown. It’s a project I look forward to each year - creating my daughter a one of a kind homemade halloween costume. But making costumes and clothes for my daughter is also a passion of mine which ultimately led to my own childrenswear collection with Dillards. So it goes without saying, I take all my designs very seriously.

So, what now? Surely any responsible designer would have thought to do their due diligence when they came across this image of my then 1 1/2 year old daughter. A quick google reverse image search would take you directly to my instagram page. The source. The owner of this image. Which, by the way, whenever you take an image, you own the copyright.

At that point, wouldn’t you just shoot me a quick message and say, “Hey, love this image of your daughter. Can we create a derivative work of it and use it as embroidery for our Cirque pieces?”

However, I never received such message from the brand. And I didn’t even know these pants and hoodies existed until I was served an ad for them.

As much as I hate drama and steer clear from it, as designer and creator myself, I simply cannot shrug this off because 1. This is my toddler daughter. 2. This was an image of a costume I designed and created by hand and was quite proud of I may add and 3. Where is the accountability? I wonder if the other patches on the pants and hoodies were also taken without consent. Where is the due diligence? Where is the integrity?

I love a healthy dose of inspiration but when it involves a copyrighted image of my own toddler used as the basis of a derivative work without permission it becomes very icky and may I say perhaps just a little too Cirque Du So-Ewww.

xx,

Kristin