DVF Settles For Mercy

Diane von Furstenberg has reached an out of court settlement with the designers from the label Mercy. Mercy is a Canadian designer label. The two designers of Mercy are Jennifer Halchuk and Richard Lyle. They brought a claim that style elements from a jacket in their collection were used by Ms. von Furstenberg in the Garden Zaria jacket in her recent Spring collection.

When the similarities between the jackets was initially discovered, Ms. von Furstenberg issued a public apology and reached out the designers directly in order to resolve the matter. The designer on her team that had introduced the jacket was fired.

The designer Jennifer Halchuk appreciated these measures: “I greatly appreciate DVF coming forward to resolve this issue in a such a forthright manner and for acknowledging our ownership of the jacket design. We are very pleased to have successfully resolved this dispute in a manner that protects our design.”

Ms. von Furstenberg is well known in the fashion industry to for lobbying in favor of the Design Piracy Prohibition Act which is a proposed piece of legislation that would enable fashion designers to protect their works as copyrighted works for a period of time.

“While this is an isolated instance for DVF, it is unfortunate that way too many others intentionally build businesses by stealing the work of other designers,” said Ms. von Furstenberg. “The design process is vulnerable and in need of urgent reform so companies like Mercy can be protected. Now is the time to pass the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, and we must all do a better job teaching the next generation of designers and the thousands of designers who work in industry that copying is wrong.”