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Fashion designer Karen Walker defends the origins of her iconic Runaway Girl brand, after one of her critics on social media claimed it was “eerily similar” to the designs of an American artist.
While specific questions about Walker’s design sparked a series of posts on social media that amplified the question about their similarity, a trademark attorney has called the review a “storm in a cup of tea.”
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 previous Walker critic, claimed that Walker’s design was similar to the Untitled (Girl with Bucket) by Kara Walker created in 1998, which showed a girl marching in oversized boots while carrying a banner to a bucket. Hooper has been involved in high-profile disputes with Walker in the past.
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In response to Stuff’s written questions, Walker said he was aware of the 1998 artwork.
“We don’t want to take anything away from Kara Walker’s work, but it is a pure coincidence that we have both created works in the cut-out silhouette style that became 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 on the go. She symbolized the spirit of the brand and almost 20 years later, our customers still love her and her drive, bravery and fearlessness.
“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 to reflect America’s civil rights struggles, and Hooper claimed the similarities were “insidious.”
However, University of Auckland associate professor Alex Sims, who specializes in trademark issues, doubted that any similarity amounted to a copyright issue. She believed that the two designs were very different.
“At that time [when Karen Walker’s brand was designed] We did not have the Internet at our fingertips to search for designs in search engines. The possibilities of [Karen Walker] seeing it would have been low. But even if I did see it, the designs are very different.
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University of Auckland associate professor Alex Sims says the problem was “a storm in a cup of tea.”
“Kara Walker is very detailed and Karen Walker’s design is very simplified. One girl has a bucket and the other has a bindle. They are completely different things.
“He doesn’t seem like a copycat to me at all,” Sims said.
Sims said that while the silhouettes were similar and both designs depicted girls marching, the ideas could not be copyrighted.
Kara Walker has been contacted for comment.
- This story has been updated from the original.
