Local designer knocked off by high street chain?

MANILA, Philippines - If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then jewelry designer Ginny Dizon must be flush with pleasure at the moment.

When fellow jewelry designer and sister-in-law Lucille Dizon spotted Ginny’s design at Mango, she snapped a photo of the bangle and immediately sent it to her relatives, including Candy Dizon, Ginny’s sister — also a jewelry designer — who immediately blogged about it on her site Because Candy Says So (www.becausecandysaysso.blogspot.com).

The Dizon siblings design under their late mother’s label, Jul B. Dizon.

The original design, an international award-winning piece, is a jewel-encrusted bangle with a jagged crack along the center.

“Ginny Dizon’s design is made out of 18-karat yellow gold,” Candy says. “It’s a hammered bangle with top-quality tanzanites and diamonds. It took us three months to collect the stones and perfect the combination of rough tanzanites and polished diamonds.”

“The Tanzanite Foundation had produced a competition that Ginny happily joined and won,” Candy Dizon explains on her blog. “Her piece toured the whole world, being presented to jewelry shows to showcase the ingenious talent the winners have by designing jewelry with tanzanite as the center of attention.”

Compared to the original, the high street version, which comes in metal with faux stones pebbling the surface, pales in comparison.

But isn’t this often the case? High-end designers will fashion a collection each season that sets the tone for the market. High street chains will look for of-the-moment silhouettes and create a similar version at a much cheaper price. Isn’t this symbiosis — though some would refer to the relationship as parasitic — the nature of the industry?

Where does one draw the line between inspiration and imitation?

Long considered a polarizing issue in fashion, lawmakers consider quantifiable material like patterns or prints a candidate for copyright. Pant styles? Not so much. In the US, companies like Forever 21 have been the object of numerous litigious suits by the likes of Anna Sui and DVF who can claim, according to the state’s laws on copyrights, that the mass chain infringed on their patents by utilizing a print or fabrication that’s practically indistinguishable from the original.

In the case of jewelry, it all comes down to shape and placement of embellishment, according to the Dizon siblings. “You know it is outright imitation when the curves, cut and formation of the piece are exactly the same,” says Candy. “The color of the stone may be different but the size and shape and placement will automatically tell you that your piece has been copied.”

Can one ethically capitalize on another’s design simply by putting a twist on an original? Isn’t that kind of the point of fashion? Hem one pair of pants a few inches higher than another and it’s a whole different ball game.

After all, Coco Chanel may have put the tweed suit on the map but numerous incarnations have appeared on runways at equally venerable houses and no one from Chanel’s camp has pointed a finger at the ensembles that clearly owe a debt to Coco’s vision.

After all, since the invention of pants, the task has simply been to refine the silhouette.

And isn’t everyone inspired by everyone at this point?

“Sure we get inspired by each other, of course we do,” Ginny reasons. “The finish of that bangle was inspired by the hammered bangles of old. But the added crack in the center and the scattering of the rough stones were inspired by the story that lightning struck the Merelani hills in Tanzania and led to the discovery of tanzanite. I just put those two elements together to come up with an ‘inspired’ piece.”

“Truthfully, it certainly is flattering,” she adds. “I find it amusing, even. What I don’t like about the whole thing — and I know now how the big labels feel about being copied — is the fact that the design that you spent so much time on, had sourced for, planned for, and ultimately took several months to complete — and cost so much to boot — is now copied for P999.”