“Not only killing the planet with all sorts of ‘dehumanizing’ policies that make these prices possible, but also stealing the energy with which new ideas come to life.” On May 15 Giuliano Calza – creative director and founder, together with his brother Giordano, of the brand Gcds – entrusted his anger and discouragement towards a behavior he defined as “abusive” to a post on Instagram: in fact, among the thousands of new products found daily on the website of the ultra-fast fashion giant Shein, a silver sandal has appeared with an unmistakable sculptural heel that copies the Morso model by Gcds. And it puts it on the market at a much lower price than the original: around 20 against 785 euros. The creative also emphasized this: «Why can’t I sell them at such a low price? Because I respect human beings, hard work and workers, I use materials and an ethical production method. I try to make my country a place where this kind of industry can live for young people like me. If you want young people’s creativity to survive and you want to see them succeed, you don’t have to be part of their game.”
Shein – at the center of a series of controversies on the environmental impact of its business model: we talked about it in this article with manager Peter Pernot Day – he is not new to similar situations: Gcds has a legal case underway against the company accused of having copied a sweater model with the Gcds logo. “There are a series of ongoing trials against them – wrote Calza – but obviously they don’t care and they won’t give any sales figures. They once said they only sold 10 pieces of a GCDS logo cardigan.”
The protection of the form (also unregistered)
Protection, in these cases, can be obtained through legal channels. And there can be even if the product has not been registered: «The rules on the protection of the shape today allow for a plurality of protections even if, hypothetically, this shape is not registered – he explains Massimiliano Mostardini, partner of Bird & Bird, referring to the case of Gcds -. For a three-dimensional shape, the Italian legal system allows excellent protection by applying the rules of copyright or slavish imitation for unfair competition and one could even think of protection as a de facto trademark, when it comes, as in this case, it would appear to have a particularly distinctive shape»
On the website of the company founded by Chris Xu in 2012 – which launches thousands of new products a day but mainly produces in response to demand – you can find products very similar to those of Diesel, Sergio Rossi, and even Zara. And for those who don’t want to go and look for them among hundreds of thousands of pieces, there are social accounts created ad hoc to report them.
The dupe phenomenon is rampant on social media
The phenomenon of dupes, i.e. products that imitate those of the big brands, is in fact amplified on social media. On TikTok alone, videos with the hashtag #dupe have had 4.2 billion views (to which are added another 2.3 billion views for those with the hashtag #dupes, in the plural). In this category there are real fakes, but also products very similar to the original ones, but on sale at a lower price. With a real boom in the beauty segment, from make-up to perfumes. On Instagram the numbers are much lower: the posts with hashtag #dupe are “only” 314 thousand. What are these posts and videos for? Often precisely to report the copy-product to their community of followers, sometimes suggesting the purchase.