Shame on Shein for stealing art

Shein, the Chinese online 'fast fashion' retailer, is the world's biggest company in that category. After the India-China border clashes, it was one of the apps GoI banned. But it's now in the news for something else: filching designs. A British artist found her artwork of English village scenes plonked on a sweater without her knowledge. This is hardly the first time the behemoth has filched creative work. It had whacked someone's skeleton art and made a line of mobile phone covers out of them. Being the biggest online fashion store seems to mean stealing designs from relatively unknown talent and then getting away with it for free, something that other international fashion outlets like Christian Dior also have committed. Perhaps, there are many out there who don't even know that big companies are making hay at their expense.

While this is a cautionary tale for retail MNCs doing whatever they please, let us here in India not get too righteous. Lifting designs and artwork - to the point of using tacky replicas of Disney characters and images from the internet to showcase building projects or advertise products - has been almost a tradition. Coming from the other end of the spectrum as Shein, small sellers hardly make desi filching less of a sin. Paying for the use of another person's creations needs to catch on this side of the fence too.