360b-shutterstock-com-22
6 August 2015Copyright

Katy Perry dress has damaged my ‘street cred’, says graffiti artist

A dress modelled by pop star Katy Perry has damaged the “street cred” of a graffiti artist, according to an intellectual property lawsuit filed against luxury brand Moschino.

Graffiti artist Joseph Tierney, who operates under the name ‘Rime’, filed a claim yesterday, August 5, at the US District Court for the Central District of California.

In the claim Rime said that Moschino and designer Jeremy Scott misappropriated the design of his mural “Vandal Eyes”.

Rime produced “Vandal Eyes” in Detroit in 2012. The design shows two long, narrow eyes with an angered expression on top of a series of red letters.

Earlier this year a dress designed by Scott was featured in a Moschino collection, but Rime said in the suit that it was a “misappropriation” of his design.

First modelled by Gigi Hadid at a Milan fashion show in 2015, the dress was later worn by Perry at the Met Gala—a highly publicised fundraising event held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this year.

The dress also included Moschino’s and Scott’s brand names as well as a “forgery” of Rime’s signature, according to the suit.

Rime said that due to the “calculated inappropriateness” of the dress worn by Perry, it had “garnered immense international publicity”.

This generated increased revenue for Moschino, Rime claimed. He cited a report in US newspaper the Wall Street Journal that showed a 16% increase in the luxury brand’s profit for the first quarter of 2015.

Rime claimed that the revenue generated also means that Moschino and Scott should be liable for unfair competition breaches as well as copyright infringement.

He added that his reputation as an artist has been damaged because such “perceived association” could cause the graffiti artist community to see him as “selling out”.

Despite past collaborations with Disney and Adidas, Rime said in the complaint that he “generally eschews connections to commercial consumerism except in carefully selected instances”.

“Nothing is more antithetical to the outsider ‘street cred’ that is essential to graffiti artists than association with European chic, luxury and glamour—of which Moschino is the epitome,” the lawsuit said.

Neither Moschino nor David Erikson, partner at Erikson Law Group and representing Rime, had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication, but we will update the story should either party get in touch.

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk