Misguided accused of ripping off independent designer's swimsuit

 

DestinationSwimwear's £65 swimsuit

MISSGUIDED has been accused of “blatantly” copying the design of black-owned business with one of their latest swimsuits.

The fashion retailer was branded “beyond lazy” by furious shoppers, who spotted similarities between their design and that of independent label, DestinationSwimwear.

Fans of the brand also pointed out that Missguided claim to stand for “diversity and equality”, while appearing to have taken inspiration the work of DesintationSwimwear’s black owner, Racquel Simone.

Missguided today said they “strongly deny” the allegation and “no element” of the DestinationSwimwear look was used in the design, which Missguided say they began putting together in March 2019.

Photos posted online show the resemblance between Missguided’s £10 Orange Leopard One Shoulder swimsuit and DestinationSwimwear’s £60 “Palm Springs” suit.

Misguided's £10 swimsuit

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How a £1 bikini revealed the changing shape of fast fashion

It was billed as the bikini that “won’t break your bank balance but might break the internet” because of the predicted stampede of shoppers to get their hands on a skimpy black polyester two-piece.

The £1 costume from Manchester-based online retailer Missguided went on sale nearly a fortnight ago, but hit the headlines last week when it was advertised during Love Island – a show the retailer has used for its promotions before. Last year Missguided sponsored the show and the few clothes worn by the contestants were all from its ranges.

The black bikini did indeed cause the expected internet sensation, but not for its sex appeal. Fast fashion critics took to social media to label it a symbol of a throwaway fashion culture that now sees British shoppers throw away a million tonnes of clothing each year.

The outrage was heightened by the government’s decision on Tuesday to reject plans for a 1p fashion tax that had been proposed following an investigation by MPs on the Commons environmental audit committee (EAC). Until then, Missguided’s biggest problem had been keeping up with customer demand: the bikini was selling out in every size – from 4 to 24 – within 45 minutes after each restock.

Founded a decade ago by Nitin Passi, Missguided is among a small number of internet fashion brands to have enjoyed success at a time when the traditional high street is on its knees.

While big names like Marks & Spencer (M&S), Topshop and Monsoon are struggling to hang on to their ageing customer bases, Missguided and online rivals Asos, Boohoo and PrettyLittleThing have cleaned up, selling inexpensive fashion to young women in their teens and twenties who shop online rather than on the high street.

Passi told the Observer that despite the furore, the company was not embarrassed about the £1 bikini as it was being sold at a loss as a marketing stunt – designed to pull in the punters to sell them other items at the same time.

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The real cost of cheap, fast fashion - to workers and the planet

Clothes from Boohoo

It comes in red, mustard and black, in sizes 6 up to 16; the bandeau bodycon minidress, is, according to the online retailer Boohoo, “perfect for transitioning from day to play”.

It is not so much the styling and colour, but the price of the £5 dress – reduced this week to just £4 – which attracts thousands of the thriving retailer’s 5 million UK customers to add it to their online shopping bag, click and pay.

Products and prices like these have driven Boohoo’s profits to a record £59.9m, bucking the trend of struggling high street fashion stores across the country.

Made in the UK, at factories in Leicester and Manchester, the £5 dress epitomises a fast fashion industry that pumps hundreds of new collections on to the market in short time at pocket money prices, with social media celebrity endorsement to boost high consumer demand. On average, such dresses and other products are discarded by consumers after five weeks.

Missguided, an online rival to Boohoo, which also sources products from Leicester, took the low pricing even further this week by promoting a £1 bikini, which proved so popular with customers that the website crashed.

But behind the price tag there is an environmental and social cost not contained on the label of such products. “The hidden price tag is the cost people in the supply chain and the environment itself pays,” said Sass Brown, a lecturer at the Manchester Fashion Institute. “The price is just too good to be true.”

A report by MPs into the fashion industry put it bluntly: in terms of environmental degradation, the textile industry creates 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 a year, more than international aviation and shipping combined, consumes lake-sized volumes of water, and creates chemical and plastic pollution – as much as 35% of microplastics found in the ocean come from synthetic clothing.

Socially, the booming fast fashion industry is often built on low wages paid to women working in factories abroad but also increasingly in the UK, in cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, London and Leicester. There is no evidence that factories in the Boohoo and Missguided supply chains pay illegal wages. However, some garment workers in Leicester are paid an average of £3 an hour – way under the national minimum wage – MPs heard in evidence.

MPs found that the Modern Slavery Act was not robust enough to stop wage exploitation at UK clothing factories. There was a lack of inspection or enforcement, allowing factories – none of which are unionised – to get away with paying illegal wages.

In the UK, we buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe – five times what we bought in the 1980s, which creates 1.3m tonnes of waste each year, some 350,000 tonnes of which is dumped in landfill or incinerated.

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