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Imagine coming up with an amazing idea, like say a hat with a zipper motif which not many people pay attention to. Then imagine givency coming up with the exact same design and everyone goes crazy.
That is exactly what happened with Tyson Perez, a Bronx designer who claims that Givenchy stole his HardWear Style hat design, except the difference is instead of Givenchy giving him some recognition for his talents, they decided to pause production and not sell it at all.
Page six claims that;
“Insiders told us that Perez’s team reached out to Givenchy about the alleged copycat hat, and, “it didn’t go into production because of the allegations. They paused it. It hasn’t been sold yet, and they denied they copied it in the first place.”
A rep for Givenchy did not confirm the move, or get back to Page six about Perez’s claim.
This particular controversy goes back to December 2020 when the Bronx designer noticed that his claimed design was in Givenchy’s creative director Matthey Williams’ debut collection.
“I saw that he posted it [on Instagram], and saw all the comments calling it, ‘Genius. What a brilliant idea.’ And he was responding to people, so I chimed in and said, ‘This looks very familiar. At least you could’ve done a better job in the construction of my design if you weren’t going to give me credit,” Perez said at the time.
Williams has not yet responded, nor taken off the hat from his personal instagram. Perez is considering suing and wants an apology but there is a lot of back of forth.
It is tough to know which side is right. On the one hand design inspirations can come from many sources, maybe Williams and perez just thought alike. On the other hand perhaps Givenchy going ahead with the production may have indirectly helped out Perez. The frustrating thing for Perez may well be that he had spoken too soon and perhaps after production the outcome may have been different. Keen to hear your thoughts.
