A group of designers are suing Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion firm reportedly valued at $66 billion, for allegedly stealing independent artists’ works “over and over again, as part of a long and continuous pattern of racketeering.”
The designers — Krista Perry, Larissa Martinez and Jay Baron — claim in their lawsuit that Shein’s “design ‘algorithm’ could not work without generating the kinds of exact copies that can greatly damage an independent designer’s career—especially because Shein’s artificial intelligence is smart enough to misappropriate the pieces with the greatest commercial potential.”
The lawsuit is packed with side-by-side comparisons such as this one:
