Nadia Plesner is a 26 year old Danish artist who was trying to spread the word on Darfur through her t-shirts which carried the artwork above titled Simple Living. For her trouble, she got a “cease and desist” from LV and subsequently a lawsuit.
Did LV get brand-jacked? If you look closely, it isn’t the LV logo that you see on the bag. Was she trying to pass it off as an LV bag? Hardly, I would say, after all it isn’t bags that she’s selling. In her reply to LV, Nadia said: “the bag in my drawing is inspired by - and refers to - designer bags in general and not a Louis Vuitton bag”.
And this is how Nadia explains the rationale for her Darfur campaign.
“My illustration Simple Living is an idea inspired by the medias constant cover of completely meaningless things.
My thought was: Since doing nothing but wearing designerbags and small ugly dogs appearantly is enough to get you on a magasine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserves and needs attention.
When we’re presented with the same images in the media over and over again, we might start to believe that they’re important.
As I was reading the book ”Not on our watch” by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast this summer, I felt horrified by the fact that even with the genocide and other ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Paris Hilton was the one getting all the attention. Is it possible that show business have outruled common sense?
If you can’t beat them, join them. This is why I have chosen to mix the cruel reality with showbiz elements in my drawing.”
My own take is that LV overreacted and may be setting itself up for a lot of bad publicity. It should have let the matter die a natural death or found a way of working with Nadia. Fake LV totes do more (and real) damage to a brand, though I wouldn’t be caught dead with one, real or fake.
And here is the other one, a poster for global warming by artist Handoko Tjung:
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