One artist is less than impressed with the dress that Katy Perry wore to this year’s Met Ball – and not for sartorial reasons. Brooklyn street artist Rime, born Joseph Tierney, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against designer Jeremy Scott and design house Moschino, for making a dress that Tierney believes imitates a signature graffiti tag that he painted on a Detroit building.
In documents filed on 5 August in a federal California court, Tierney’s lawyers allege that by creating the dress and having it widely photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute annual fundraising event, Scott and Moschino used Tierney’s designs without licensing them.
“Not only was [Rime’s] art exploited by [Scott and Moschino], but his credibility as a graffiti artist was compromised by inclusion in such a crass and commercial publicity stunt,” read the documents. “Rime has always chosen his commercial projects carefully. While he accepted Disney’s invitation to reinterpret Mickey Mouse, and placed his original designs on Adidas and Converse footwear, Rime regularly declines corporate offers to license his work.”
Perry wore the dress on the red carpet of the Met Ball, themed this year as China: Through the Looking Glass. The dress in question is black, and features a colourful graffiti-like design on its lower half, as well as painterly details on a pair of gloves. Model Gigi Hadid wore the dress on the catwalk during Moschino’s autumn/winter 2015 fashion show, and has also been named in the lawsuit.
This isn’t the first time a fashion designer has been the focus of an intellectual property lawsuit. In 2014, three street artists sued Roberto Cavalli for allegedly deriving graffiti-like clothing designs from a mural they had painted, and placing them on items in the designer’s Just Cavalli collection.
Moschino are yet to release a public statement on the allegations.
