Fashion brand Guess was on Monday  forced to withdraw a handbag  from
markets after being accused of stealing its design from the independent
black-owned company Telfar.

The American clothing and acccessories brand, in a
statement, said that it did not want to create ‘impediments’ to the success of
Teflar

“Some on social media have compared the totes to Telfar’s
Global shopping bags. Signal Brands (who license the handbags) does not want to
create any impediments to Telfar Global’s success and, as such, has
independently decided to stop selling the G-logo totes,” said the statement given to Guardian.

Telfar’s vegan leather gender-neutral bag, called “the shopping bag” has won the Design Museum’s 2020 fashion design award. It has also been praised for highlighting the importance of black style, as well as joining the dots between luxury goods and accessibility.

According to Guardian.com, the visual similarities between the two handbags are hard to miss.

The Guess tote, sold in red, grey, and black, has a circular G-shaped logo similar to the Telfar TC logo and its distinctive rectangular shape is strikingly similar to the Telfar bag. The product description of the G-tote says the bag is “a smooth, faux-leather tote bag with dual top handles and a shoulder strap for a versatile look”.

“Stop stealing from black creatives,” wrote one in the comment section of the Diet Prada website. “Overhyped fashion brands stealing from innovative PoC designers, are we surprised?” wrote another.

In a series of tweets Antoine Gregory, the founder of Black Fashion Fair, raised the racism issues

“I think the most annoying and yet interesting part of this is the fact that a company like Guess has the capital and resources to produce this bag in great quantities when the original designer could not,” she wrote.

Before this, Guess was involved in a decade-long legal case with Gucci over an alleged lookalike logo on the company’s footwear in 2009.