Remember my WENDYB by Wendy Brandes sterling-silver swear rings, which I started selling in 2008?
Click to purchase.
Remember how Topshop recently created a “Punctuation Ring Pack”?
Click for original post on Topshop's rings.
After a whole lot of you took to Twitter to comment on the Topshop’s design’s similarity to my rings — and my PR person placed a call to Topshop — Topshop apologized and said it would stop selling its rings.
The company took the rings off its website not long after the above Tweet. Since then, I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the accessories folks at Topshop to discuss collaborating. But, like Marcel the Shell’s sister Marissa, the key person is traveling.
Then, yesterday, I got an email from gorgeous Moscow-based client Julia. She was the first person to order a set of gold-plated swear rings from me.
Click Julia to read The "Thank You" Project, her blog of gratitude.
Julia’s lovely colleague — who has seen Julia’s WENDYB rings — was in a local Topshop and was surprised to see the “punctuation” rings, clearly NOT removed from sale.
Photo by Nastia.
I guess Topshop didn’t realize that I have an international network of ring spies looking out for me! If you see this design in YOUR local Topshop, please take a picture and send it to me at wbjewelry at hotmail dot com so that I can share it with the traveling Topshop executive. Thanks, bitches!
UPDATED TO ADD: And here are the rings in Topshop’s Melbourne, Australia, store yesterday. Thanks for checking, Skylark!
Time to lawyer it the Hell Up. x
Don’t worry — my lawyer is kept up-to-date on everything.
F#@!-ERS!!
Maybe… it’s possible that someone in that shop missed a few and didn’t pull them (or got lazy and just DIDN’T pull them)? When I was at UO, I know how hard it could be to keep track of inventory in terms of where people may have stashed things, ESPECIALLY jewelry.
Maybe I’m just a foolish optimist? SMH, Topshop.
I hope that’s the case!
you’re being way too kind to topshop by giving them the benefit of the doubt.
you have a heart of gold!
i’ll slink in to my local CopyShop tomorrow and check it out.
All I can say is grrrrrr!!
I saw them today in the one and only Topshop in Australia, and I am pretty certain they are newly stocked (ie well and truly after the time topshop alleged that they were withdrawing them from sale), as I didn’t see them there a week or so ago when i had a good look at the jewellery. Photo has been sent to your email address, Wendy. Get the bastards!
Will check in Town this week. Cheeky but entirely predictable. Maybe you should write to Sir Phillip Green about it. Lot of emphasis on design “collaborations” between Chloe his daughter, or before that Kate Moss. Collaboration does not mean rip off as far as I remember. Write to The Guardian about it to. They love to get their noses into a story.
Xx
Thanks for your help!
Forgot my twitter link
So happy to hear that you have supporters across the planet. I’m one of them!
I’m surprised Topshop didn’t send a communication out to all stores to pull the rings! Very shabby.
Un-flipping-believable! That is really, really outrageous. Hope you take them down xx
C@*ts!!! I will check our local one when I go past!!
They really need to stop messin’ with Wendy.
You’ve got spies all over the world looking out for you.
Thats a absolutely ridiculous, & doesnt say much for the integrity of their brand!
They could just pay you for the designs. I wonder when these companies are going to realize that designers don’t just live in the middle of no where. My neighbor is a photographer and a friend of his found that Forever21 was selling a t-shirt with one of his photos on it. He sued and got a fair amount of money, but they could have just lisenced the image from him for much less than they settled on him for the suit!
Thanks so much for your comment on my blog!
Major fucking lawsuit! They knew they were copying your design and continued to sell it! Fuckers. Don’t let them get away with it.
That is so F#@!’d up, pardon the French. But not surprising to me at all. I feel like I’m one of the few lonely working class fashionistas who does NOT support the H&M’s, the Topshops and the F-21’s of the world. They sell cheap shit at a price. The price is the worker’s wages, the art/design they steal and the bankrupting mentality of disposable fashion. I hope you get your come uppance. Because this is more than stealing A designs- obviously yours was one of many they take and fake. But it does affect your livlihood. Even in photos the quality difference is unmistakable but tell me would someone who has the $$ towards one of your gorgeous pieces really want a design on sale in the clearance rack at topshop? If confuses and reduces the cache of your pieces with your designs. #TEAMBRANDES