We Celebrate All Cultures

March 26, 2021 3:18 PM

Fashion outlet Tory Burch tries to pass off traditional fisherman's sweater from Portugal as Mexican poncho, gets busted. Also maybe scamming Portuguese cabbage-shaped plates.

The "Poveira" shirt from Povoa de Varzim
Tory Burch's statement (English) (Portuguese)
On Twitter
Camisolas poveiras: ameaçada com um processo e atacada nas redes sociais, Tory Burch pede desculpa (Público)

posted by chavenet (25 comments total)

LOL, this company did a similar 'misattribution' in 2017: U.S. designer Tory Burch has changed the description of one of her designs, a traditional Romanian-style coat, after her brand angered thousands of Romanians for marketing it as a garment inspired by Africa. The online group La Blouse Roumaine, which promotes traditional costume, showed on Facebook Burch's design next to a virtually identical Romanian one on display in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:22 PM on March 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

WTF

earlier in 2017: Tory Burch Under Fire for Cultural Appropriation With New Ad
2018: Tory Burch Reinforces Diversity & Inclusion In New Memo
2020: Luxury dresses criticised for 'culturally appropriating' North African design -- Tory Burch and Harvey Nichols slammed for selling traditional embroidered clothes at high prices and without acknowledgement of their Maghreb roots

[Around the World with Tory Burch: Discover how the American designer's wanderlust and love of travel influences her lifestyle brand. “When I’m in India, I’m a tourist in the best sense of the word,” Burch says. Okay, Four Seasons "Magazine."]
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:46 PM on March 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

In Tory Burch's world, "We Celebrate All Cultures" can be universally translated to: "We Steal From Everybody." Christ what an asshole.
posted by pjsky at 4:31 PM on March 26, 2021 [12 favorites]

I don’t have a ton of previous background on this issue, but the first question that comes to mind is — with these serial incidents, why haven’t stores refused to sell her goods? How complicit is the entire industry in allowing this to stand?
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:02 PM on March 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

I read sometime back that dress designs can’t be copyrighted or patented and that designers rush out their new line before anyone can copy it, hoping to sell enough at the high name brand price before the cheap knockoffs appear. So maybe theft like this is just part of the fashion business.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:04 PM on March 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

njohnson23 - I’ve had a few conversations with a copyright attorney around stuff like this - also not copyright-able are recipes. There is a certain odor of “traditional female arts aren’t REAL IP” to me. I believe there were some smaller ethnic groups that looked to copyright as a group? Which doesn’t fit into the European model. This whole thing is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:10 PM on March 26, 2021 [15 favorites]

"I remembered from studying art history how the work of Judith Leyster, one of the great Dutch Masters, was misattributed after her death simply because she was a woman. It’s a struggle that women artists have faced throughout history and still do to this day.” -- Tory Burch, discussing her new fall collection during New York Fashion Week, Feb. 18, 2020
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:35 PM on March 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

@Iris Gambol — that quote is just... is just...
to quote Eyebrows McGee — SQUISHY SQUISHY LITTLE BLUEBERRY!!!
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:46 PM on March 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

695....euros....
"Mohl Fur Company, seller of imported fur products, agreed to pay a $70,000 penalty because it failed to disclose the country of origin of the pelts in their imported fur products. Likewise, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., Delia’s Inc., Woolrich, Inc., Gottschalks, Inc., and Bugle Boy Industries, Inc. all settled with the FTC over allegations that they failed to provide proper county-of-origin labeling."
posted by clavdivs at 5:49 PM on March 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Is that a real poncho . . . I mean
Is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Hmmm . . . no foolin' . . .
posted by Redhush at 6:24 PM on March 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

I'll say one thing for Ms. Burch: she knows how to get free advertising.
posted by rhizome at 6:29 PM on March 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Just... why? What purpose does saying it comes from the wrong country rather than correctly attributing the influence serve? It's not like it isn't cultural appropriation if you misidentify the culture you're appropriating it from.
posted by eviemath at 7:15 PM on March 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

@eviemath — Colonialism? Mexico and Africa are “exotic” (or add your own euphemism) cultures compared to Romania and Portugal from a European point of view. Just a guess.
posted by Silvery Fish at 7:39 PM on March 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

Eh, Romania seems pretty exotic to most Americans.
posted by eviemath at 8:06 PM on March 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

well ya.

It's not like it isn't cultural appropriation if you misidentify the culture you're appropriating it from.

If it's a t- shirt shop perhaps. Still, I can see misidentified objects being repackaged. But at 695 euro...did they not have a board meeting , a design... session...run through research and legal and let's knit kind of things that multi million dollar companies do? Its not Pier 1 for heaven's sake...pause that's not on your question eviemath because it's seems plausible, an opps and re-label. But no such thing has occurred I believe as in, oh we mislabeled the Baja collection as our man in Lisbon yata-yata mishap.
it's slick it's crass it's unfettered capitalist jargon on over priced goods patterned (stolen) from another cultures sweaters.
posted by clavdivs at 8:39 PM on March 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

I don't get why they bothered changing the origin stories on these things. It's not like Africa is The Dark Continent anymore, and these days Americans know more about Mexico than Portugal. It appears this woman is just a shopper with a good eye and a terrible sense of marketing propriety. It's like the J Peterman catalog crossed with an exec that reads the copy and believes.
posted by Cris E at 9:18 PM on March 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

Lovingly handcrafted by the native peoples of... wherever.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:01 PM on March 26, 2021 [16 favorites]

I don't get why they bothered changing the origin stories on these things ... Americans know more about Mexico than Portugal.

When we came up with this campaign, we wanted to make an artistic statement that was exciting and dynamic, and got people talking about the origins of design in fashion.
We know that Portugal and Romania have traditions that they are proud of, which is why we used them. When the mayor of some village sends us an angry letter: that's great! It shows that people still care about their traditional designs — not only in Africa, but in Romania too! We appreciate all the help and publicity we can get. Many people would call this 'free publicity', but let me be clear: I do not work for free! Writing that fake apology took a lot of work and dedication. It's just so hard to get attention these days.
posted by romanb at 11:31 PM on March 26, 2021 [7 favorites]

I don't get why they bothered changing the origin stories on these things.

I honestly think that this is just sloppiness. The ship is not held together tightly, and bullshit slips through the cracks. It’s a poorly run shop. Red flags.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:51 PM on March 26, 2021 [8 favorites]

Many people would call this 'free publicity'

In South Korea they call it 'noise marketing' - being controversial on purpose to become a topic of conversation.

But I think mr_roboto is right and this is laziness and thoughtlessness. And assuming the clientele of a 695 euro brand will enjoy it more if they give it this 'global south' labeling because rich people are ignorant and thoughtless too.
posted by subdee at 11:22 AM on March 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here's a screenshot of the 695 euro sweater from the Tory Burch shop, courtesy a Portuguese news-site on the government's legal case "against the stylist Tory Burch because of 'suspicions of an eventual abusive appropriation of an important Portuguese intangible heritage - the poveira sweater.'"

I was having trouble getting the embedded Instagram posts/images to show up for me in the linked articles.

I am guessing the neck line/drawstring, in absence of actual information about the item's real life inspiration, is what prompted some clueless copywriter to go with "Mexican poncho." This is worse than the online listings written by local Goodwill employees, who are doing their best to guess what an item is!
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:50 PM on March 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

To most Americans, Romania conjures images of abandoned and neglected orphans. So deliberately misattributing to "Africa" (the entire continent??) checks out on a marketing level. Write some generic copy about safari and you're good to go.

The Portugal/Mexico thing is even more bizarre. But Portugal doesn't really feature at all in the American collective brainspace, so maybe they were just picking countries at random by that point?
posted by basalganglia at 5:31 PM on March 27, 2021

I would have thought people who buy this brand would prefer the Portugal origin story. I wondered if they had done it to avoid EU rules about not stealing the names of products of particular regions and the lawsuit.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 5:47 PM on March 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

The potential customers are more likely to have visited (and gotten drunk in) Portugal than Africa.

I am imagining "Ooops." being said in the driest possible deadpan as the copy is approved.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:33 AM on March 28, 2021

Write some generic copy about safari and you're good to go.

This is why I watch Rick Steves.
posted by clavdivs at 12:25 PM on March 28, 2021 [1 favorite]