Kardashian Kollection Offers Distinctive Knock-Off Handbag

By Jenna Sauers | August 12, 2011 | 6:40pm

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The just-released Kardashian Kollection for Sears includes a pretty direct knock-off of a well-recognized Botkier handbag. The small label has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sears. Designer Monica Botkier says that in fashion, intellectual property theft is “not necessarily about sticking on a fake label,” but can occur when “you are actually taking someone’s design idea.” (The law on this point, at least in the U.S., is currently somewhat vague in the scope of its protections.) Steven Kolb, the director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, says, “All designers deserve the right to design protection and only the creator of an original design should profit from that design. Taking someone’s work and calling it your own is wrong and robs the designer of a rightful return of their investment.” [WWD]

Taking a light-fingered approach to others’ ideas is not new to the sisters K. Back when the Kardashians had a fashion line at Bebe — that is, before the chain determined the reality TV sisters had lost their “relevance” — they copied a distinctive Fendi dress with a hood and a built-in leather corset. (It was not an unknown or overlooked dress: it turned up on the red carpet and in magazines, and Jessica Stam wore it in Fendi’s seasonal ad campaign.) At the time, Kim Kardashian wrote on her blog, “I’ve seen some talk online about certain pieces ‘knocking off’ other designer’s pieces and I’d like to share a little piece of fashion wisdom… the clothes you see in the chain stores at your mall are all inspired by designer, runway fashion!!! What stores like Bebe do is take runway fashion and use it as inspiration to create pieces that are wearable and accessible for everyone. To say any of our pieces are a knock off is like saying every item in every clothing store in your mall is a knock off.” Gee, someone sure knows her Baudrillard. [Kim Kardashian, Earlier]

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The Daily Beast reported yesterday that “multiple sources” — all anonymous — have pointed to Lucky editor (and prolific blogger) John Jannuzzi as the person behind the hilarious @CondeElevator Twitter account, which gained nearly 60,000 followers in a few days by Tweeting overheard conversations from the media giant’s elevators, attracted the attention of Condé higher-ups, and then went dark yesterday. It’s weird when things we joke about on Twitter come…true? [TDB]
Except: Jannuzzi denies that he is @CondeElevator. [Lucky]
Jannuzzi: “In other news, London was burning, stocks are all over the place and there’s a bull loose in Queens.” This is an awful lot of fuss to be making over a measly 35 pseudonymous Tweets. [@JohnJannuzzi]
Women’s Wear Daily takes a crack at What It All Means: “The feed’s brief time represented a medieval moment for the Internet, a recycling of culture to the point that it’s difficult to remember what was so great about the original.” (“The original” in this case being the old Gawker “Elevator Chronicles” series from ’03.) [WWD]

A team of Kazakh designers made this hair-helmet. We’re not sure if this is, you know, “real,” but Bret McKenzie did it better anyway. [Good.kz via Daily Mail]

Speaking of Photoshop, here’s a new Diorskin ad with Natalie Portman. This is to our knowledge the first new ad Portman’s done for Dior since the John Galliano racism scandal. [HB UK]

Kristen Stewart looks…almost as if she doesn’t hate us all on sight on the cover of W. [W]

Barack Obama had dinner in Harvey Weinstein‘s basement last night. Anna Wintour co-hosted. Jimmy Fallon and Gwyneth Paltrow were among the guests who paid $35,750 apiece to gain entry. [WWD]
Apparently, it was “hot” in the basement. [Time]
Gwen Stefani probably won’t make it to the L.A.M.B. show this season at New York fashion week. She will likely be in the studio in Los Angeles, working on a new No Doubt album. [P6]
Olivia Wilde, Zoe Saldana, and Eva Longoria are each directing a short film for Glamour magazine this month. Each will adapt a Glamour true-life reader story. Wilde says, “I’ve always kind of mourned the small number of female directors in this business and I kind of complain about it a lot without doing anything. So instead of whining about there being a lack of female directors, why don’t I become one and create my own story.” [WWD]
A woman named Kim Navarra really loves Abercrombie & Fitch. Really, really loves Abercrombie & Fitch. Her closet is all Abercrombie, all the time. She was such a frequent shopper, in fact, that Abercrombie banned her, and wouldn’t let her place an order with a $200 gift card — because it suspected she was a re-seller. The good news is Kim Navarra is still free to shop at a store that hasn’t been found to discriminate against workers who happen to be disabled, Muslim, or any race besides white. [ABC]
A skin cancer charity created a fake website selling a fake product called Sunny 3 — a tanning cream that triples the power of the sun! Sadly, 14,000 people tried to buy it. Always wear sunscreen, kids. [Daily Mail]
Speaking of cancer, InStyle magazine held a party in Los Angeles and provided buckets of cigarettes at every table. [WWD]
Alexander Wang cares deeply that random people on the Internet not think of him as an “It” designer. “A friend of his referenced his It status in a recent blog post, which Wang was adamant he change. ‘I texted him right away and I was like, Please do not ever refer to me as anything It, whether it’s It boy, It designer, It person.‘” [HB]
Polo Ralph Lauren is changing its name — henceforth, the label run by the designer formerly known as Ralph Lifshitz, formerly known as Polo Ralph Lauren, will be known as Ralph Lauren tout court. [WWD]
Michael Kors has been looking for an investor, and he’s found one. Kors just sold a minority stake in his label in a deal that values his company at $2.5 billion. [NYPost]
Nordstrom’s net earnings rose 20% to $176 million in the last quarter. [WWD]
In this ad for Nars cosmetics, a model has her makeup done by a robot. A robot. [YouTube]