Investigative Journalism

Urban Counterfeiters:
The Death and Resurrection of Fashion-Related Irony

By Miles Clements

Irony is a dead scene, or so The Dillinger Escape Plan claim. But you know what? They’re right. Irony doesn’t have that biting edge or hint of supremacy anymore; it’s just a tagline and a catchphrase that’s scrawled across t-shirts. I have to believe, however, that if it weren’t for Urban Outfitters, irony would still be a viable form of humor and expression, not some bullshit zeitgeist for apathetic hipsters. After all, nobody wants to see any more re-branded Joy Division tank tops and faux-Soviet kitsch.

There’s a lot more to Urban Outfitters than its pseudo-ironic destruction of irony, though. For one, the company is increasingly dominating the ever-important “well-educated, urban-minded young adult” market while also making tremendous financial gains. During the 2005 fiscal year alone, the company earned $828 million in sales, which is a 66% increase from the previous year and a significant jump from its previously impressive 20% yearly growth. But the main strength of Urban Outfitters isn’t its financial growth, but the fact that it has established itself as a viable mainstream “alternative” to stores like the Gap and Abercrombie and Fitch – one that’s a dependable purveyor of “hip” products that border on attaining that underground sense of “cool.”

But during the past few years, Urban Outfitters has also been saddled with complaints about some of its more “risqué” products, including Ghettopoly and a magnetically-clothable Jesus. The former is, as you may have guessed, a “ghetto” version of Monopoly in which players aim to fence off all of their stolen property and addict their neighborhoods to crack. Needless to say, the game did not get a very warm reception from community activists and was pulled from the shelves. So when I got a e-mail from a friend of mine the other day, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear that Urban Outfitters is in trouble again. This time the company isn’t just pitching bogus products, it’s apparently stealing them.

If you happen to know any designers, or just simply like to peruse the interweb, then you probably have heard that Urban Outfitters is being accused of stealing and then using designs from small, independent artists and clothing companies. The seemingly hefty accusations aren’t unfounded, though. In fact, they’re fairly well-documented and widespread; a simple search brings up hit upon hit of complaints. The most recent case comes from the Paul Frank-like designer and questionably qualified confectioner Johnny Cupcakes. A few years ago, Mr. Cupcakes designed a t-shirt with a jet dropping his scrumptious namesake. Clever. Soon after, he started into talks with Urban Outfitters about the retailer potentially carrying his products. So, he sent to company some shirt samples, including the now infamous aforementioned design. Flash forward to a few weeks ago. A friend of Johnny Cupcakes finds a similar shirt in Urban Outfitters, with the colors, plane and cupcakes changed ever so slightly. The only problem was that the shirt wasn’t being sold under the Johnny Cupcakes name, but under Urban Outfitters’ “Urban Renewal” sub-brand. Until recently, the Johnny Cupcakes website had a post on its opening page detailing the incident with pictures of the two shirts and some words from Mr. Cupcakes himself. The page, however, has since been removed; perhaps because of legal action or perhaps because he didn’t want to burn any bridges. I’m inclined to believe the former, though, seeing as how there are a handful of strikingly similar stories out there. But the problem for the designers is that Urban Outfitters likely changed the designs just enough to avoid copyright infringement. Yet even without the necessary legal evidence, these designers’ stories have much more credibility than Urban Outfitters could ever muster, especially with their smarmy spies that lurk around malls and hipster hangouts like creepy pedophiles.

But, of course, there’s even more to the story. After all, Urban Outfitters isn’t just milking the independent designer subculture for which it fawns support; it’s also milking its generally youthful, liberal-minded customers. Behind all of the store’s “Die Yuppie Scum” and Kerry ’04 shirts and products, there’s Richard Hayne, a staunchly conservative Republican. Over the past decade, Hayne has donated over $17,000 to the Pennsylvania state GOP as well as the Federal Republican Party. But an individual is entitled to his or her personal beliefs, right? Right. However, the problem doesn’t lie in the fact that Hayne is a staunch Republican (though I must admit that it is a bit peculiar), it’s the fact that some of Hayne’s contributions have not just been made by himself, but by Urban Outfitters, Inc. Presented with information by Jonathan Valania of the Philadelphia Weekly that $4,650 was donated Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum via Urban Outfitters, Hayne claimed that the information troubling and said that he would “have to look into it” and that he “didn’t think it was right.” What’s more troubling though, is Santorum himself, the arch-conservative Senator who equates homosexuality to incest and bestiality and whose K Street Project infected Washington with an even more corrupt system of lobbyist-hiring. Think Jack Abramoff and bribery, for example.

In spite of this, the coup de grâce isn’t Urban Outfitters’ conservative heads blindly milking its left-leaning customers; it’s Urban Outfitters suing Wal-Mart for allegedly stealing fabric designs from Anthropologie, a subsidiary of Urban Outfitters, Inc. Maybe irony isn’t dead after all.

For more information and more visuals:
Urban Outfitters, Inc.
MSN Money on UO
Philadelphia Weekly on UO
Johnny Cupcakes
Crown World Clothing and UO
Federal Election Commission