{"id":15430,"date":"2012-04-29T15:33:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T19:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=15430"},"modified":"2013-08-01T13:41:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T17:41:51","slug":"im-smh-at-topshops-version-of-my-swear-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/im-smh-at-topshops-version-of-my-swear-rings\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m SMH at Topshop’s Version of My Swear Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sterling-silver swear-ring set<\/a> from my WENDYB by Wendy Brandes line<\/a> has been one of my most popular designs since I introduced it at a designer friend’s runway show in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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My sterling-silver swear rings. $380 for the set. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Gorgeous blogger Julia of The ‘Thank You’ Project wears the gold-plated version. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

Word and letter jewelry has been around for ages, and I’m not the first designer to do “Fuck” jewelry.\u00a0I’ve said myself that there’s nothing new under the sun<\/a>. I even have two types of blog posts on inspiration\/revivals\/coincidence\/occasional blatant theft in fashion: Fashion Repeats Itself <\/a>and Great Minds Think Alike<\/a>.\u00a0 As gorgeous clothing designer<\/a>\/blogger<\/a> Stacy Lomman recently wrote<\/a>, “Trends and styles constantly recycle.\u00a0 In fashion, designers reinterpret these ideas and trends by putting their ‘spin’ on them and making them look fresh and current.” I’ve always been proud of my swear-ring “spin”: the quality, the size, the weight, the font, the four separate rings, the characters chosen.<\/p>\n

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My rings on gorgeous blogger Queen Michelle of Kingdom of Style.<\/p><\/div>\n

Believe it or not, I gave serious thought as to whether I’d use an “at sign” or an asterisk in this set. I ended up liking the look of the “at” better.<\/p>\n

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My rings on gorgeous blogger Cyrillynn of Any Second Now.<\/p><\/div>\n

I can’t tell what size the rings in Topshop’s \u00a314.00 “Punctuation Ring Pack” are, but from the picture on the website, I admit that I find the execution of this idea a bit more similar to mine than I would like.<\/p>\n

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Topshop’s “Punctuation” rings. Thanks to Sarah for pointing this out. Click photo to follow her on Twitter.<\/p><\/div>\n

In fact, when I first saw the photo, I felt the way I had instructed Tina J to act while while she modeled my swear rings for my Fall 2012 lookbook.<\/p>\n

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Click for more photos of Tina J by Shane LaVancher.<\/p><\/div>\n

In contrast, Topshop’s OMG ring set doesn’t bother me at all because the font is so different from my OMG rings. Here is my OMG set …<\/p>\n

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My sterling-silver OMG rings. $300 for the set. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

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My OMG rings on gorgeous blogger Solo Lisa.<\/p><\/div>\n

… and here is Topshop’s. I know I’m biased but I like my font better.<\/p>\n

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You get what you pay for — it’s worth every bit of \u00a38.50.<\/p><\/div>\n

Nevertheless, I do want to slap myself for the times — before I had any experience with my own business — when I glibly made statements like, “Designers should knock themselves off before someone else does.” I’ve since discovered that’s much easier to say than to do it. To get the price breaks I need to sell inexpensive product<\/a>, I need to manufacture a large quantity of each style<\/a>. That means I need to pay a lot of money up front. For instance, right now I’m hoping to produce some brass rings that I could sell to y’all for $20 each, but to meet the minimum order requirement, I need to cough up $10,000. (To do the whole alphabet, plus some symbols, would cost about $50,000 upfront.) That’s an investment I can’t currently afford, especially when I don’t have a big order from a retailer and would be doomed to a repeat of the distribution problems I wrote about in this Huffington Post piece on the agony and ecstasy of a small business<\/a>.\u00a0 And even if I did it, my designs would still be twice the price of Topshop’s because that company is getting bigger price breaks for the efficiency of producing thousands of units of one style compared to my order of 150 to 200 units. I’ve always hoped to collaborate with the likes of Topshop or H&M (or some other giant chain that has access to those nifty, thrifty child-labor factories I read so much about) in order to sell jewelry at the rock-bottom prices that consumers crave.\u00a0 But I’ve always figured it was more likely that because I don’t have an ultra-famous name (hello, Kate Moss, nice job knocking off all the vintage dresses in your closet<\/a>), they’d reject my offer if I made a pitch …\u00a0 then do my designs anyway.<\/p>\n

In this case, I won’t swear to it that Topshop has its eye on me. The influence isn’t as screamingly obvious as when Claire’s Accessories practically Xeroxed five designs by Tatty Devine<\/a>. If Topshop really wants to ride my creative coattails, it can start offering the YEA HOE rings I custom-made for gorgeous rapper Gangsta Boo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Boo wearing her YEA HOE rings. Click to order your own set. Hashtag sold separately.<\/p><\/div>\n

Okay, that might be too undeniable even for a big chain with a lot more money and lawyers than me.\u00a0 But if Topshop’s next letter-ring offering is a set of YOLO rings like mine, I’ll have to get my one lawyer to write a strongly worded letter about all this<\/a>. Go ahead, Topshop. I dare you.<\/p>\n

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Click to purchase my sterling-silver YOLO rings for $415 for the set.<\/p><\/div>\n

On that note, I’ll introduce my Jewel of the Month for May a few days early. SMH is Twitter-ese for “shaking my head.”<\/p>\n

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$450 for the made-in-NYC set. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I first started seeing this acronym, I loathed it. A large percentage of the people using it on Twitter are so batshit-crazy that they don’t deserve to be shaking their heads (or their damn heads — SMDH — or their motherfucking heads — SMMFH) in judgment at anyone else.\u00a0 Then, as the Washington Post said about YOLO<\/a>, it became an acronym I loved to hate. I had to do a ring set, which is now available for pre-order<\/a>. (My YOLO<\/a>, OMG<\/a> and F@#!<\/a> ring sets are all available for immediate delivery<\/em>. So are my WTF<\/a>, LOL<\/a>, LOLZ<\/a> and NYC<\/a> ring sets; my individual exclamation point<\/a>, asterisk<\/a>, hashtag<\/a>, emoticon heart<\/a> and “at sign” <\/a>rings; and my emoticon heart cufflinks<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Because of my rings, I feel more warmly towards SMH, though I don’t tweet it. My most-hated-expression-on-Twitter award now goes to *sips tea*<\/a>, which is what people upgrade to when SMH isn’t condescending enough for them. I’ll give that one as a freebie idea to Topshop — go ahead, do a tea-sipping ring. That and the super-corny LOVE toe-ring<\/a> set you have don’t interest me at all. I’ve got better concepts in the works. *WendyB sits back, sips tea, waits for Topshop’s next design.*<\/p>\n

Look, I understand that my jewelry isn’t in everyone’s budget. That’s fine. Chain stores exist to give people less-expensive options. However, if you can afford my designs, you should know how much I adore all my customers. Does Topshop give a F@#! about you? Whenever you can, spend your money with someone who appreciates you, like me. Plus I’m a fanatic for quality, which means that my work is worth the money. Remember, you’ll never get more than what you pay for<\/a>!<\/p>\n

UPDATED 4\/30\/12 TO ADD: If Topshop really wanted to do “punctuation” rings, the company could have offered a set like one I wore a few years ago.<\/p>\n

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WendyB wearing punctuation rings in 2009. Click for original post.<\/p><\/div>\n

For a special occasion, I left off the “F” from the regular swear-ring set and swapped in the asterisk ring that I sell separately. I don’t sell this as a set, so if I’d seen it on Topshop I would have thought, “Great minds think alike,” rather than “probably an imitation.” See how easy it is to cover your ass? Another way to go is using different materials. A while ago, customers alerted me to an Etsy seller who did F@#! rings using computer-keyboard letters. No problem. Didn’t look anything like mine. I put that in the “great minds think alike” category.<\/p>\n

UPDATED 4\/30\/12 AGAIN TO ADD: Here are some other bloggers’ posts about this.<\/p>\n