Fashion designer Karen Walker is standing by the origins of her iconic Runaway Girl branding, after one of her social media critics claimed it was “eerily similar” to an American artist’s designs.
While the pointed questions about Walker’s design prompted a number of social media posts amplifying the question about its similarity, a specialist trademark lawyer has called the criticism a “storm in a teacup”.
Karen Walker created the Runaway Girl design of a marching girl holding a bindle in 2001.
But in a Twitter post, Pebbles Hooper – the daughter of fashion designers Denise L’Estrange Corbet and Francis Hooper, and a past critic of Walker – claimed Walker’ s design was similar to Kara Walker’s artwork Untitled (Girl with Bucket) created in 1998, which showed a girl marching in oversized boots while carrying a banner towards a bucket. Hooper has been involved in high-profile disputes with Walker in the past.
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In response to written questions from Stuff, Walker said she was aware of the 1998 artwork.
“We don’t wish to take away from Kara Walker’s work at all but it’s a pure coincidence we’ve both created works in the cut-out silhouette style made popular in the 18th and 19th centuries – a widely-known and used style still popular today.
“My husband, our creative director, drew Runaway Girl in 2001 for our first collection at London Fashion Week called ‘Runaway’.
“We wanted a girl in motion. She symbolised the spirit of the brand and nearly 20 years later, our customers still love her and her élan, fearlessness and intrepidity.
“Runaway Girl’s hair and face was an interpretation of me as a child and she was done in the well-known silhouette style that has been used for hundreds of years.”
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Karen Walker’s iconic Runaway Girl was created by the eponymous designer in 2001.
Hooper said the brand’s response was “dismissive and condescending”. Kara Walker’s work was seen as reflecting the United States’ civil rights struggles and Hooper claimed the similarities were “insidious”.
However, University of Auckland associate professor Alex Sims, who specialises in trademark issues, was dubious that any similarities amounted to a copyright issue. She believed the two designs were very different.
“Back then [when Karen Walker’s brand was designed] we didn’t have the Internet at our fingertips to research designs on search engines. The chances of [Karen Walker] seeing it would have been low. But even if she did see it, the designs are very different.
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Associate professor at the University of Auckland Alex Sims says the issue was “a storm in a tea cup”.
“Kara Walker is very detailed and Karen Walker’s design is very simplified. One girl has a bucket the other is carrying a bindle. They’re completely different things.
“To me it doesn’t look like a copy cat at all,” Sims said.
Sims said while the silhouettes were similar and both designs depicted marching girls, ideas could not be copyrighted.
Kara Walker has been approached for comment.
- This story has been updated from the original.
