Now let's get a little fashionable...

Marc by Marc Jacobs, a fashion designer responsible for shades, shirts, shoes and purses that cost way too much much money, is in trouble for a recent shirt design that looked a lot like the album art for a white power punk band. A recent shirt design featured the soles of a pair of combat boots, emblazoned with the designer's name. The trouble stems from the fact that the artwork is almost identical to the cover art to Skrewdriver's 1987 LP Boots & Braces, a release from a band with self-professed neo-Nazi ideals.


The shirt, which sold for $68, has been yanked from stores, with a spokesperson for the brand telling The Cut:

It has been brought to our attention that the imagery on a T-shirt of ours is similar to that used by a band. We were not trying to make a connection to that band or make a statement of any kind. We have removed the stock of the shirt from our own stores and offer our retail partners the same opportunity.

That's all well and good; they pulled the product in order to avoid offending anyone, and to distance themselves from the beliefs of a band that explicitly preached hate.

But perhaps the bigger question is: "why did they make the design in the first place?"

I'm not talking about the idea that they would advocate the ideals of Skrewdriver or their followers. I don't think anyone thinks that, and I doubt that anyone believes that anyone at the design house harbors any racist intentions.

The shifty part, though, is that they somehow arrived at art that was nearly identical to an existing punk record, racist or not.

Someone saw some existing artwork, probably without realizing the connotations of the band, and decided it would be perfectly fine to co-opt the art for a $68 t-shirt. (And by co-opt, I'm looking for the nicest possible way to say it was stolen.)

The theft of punk imagery for expensive clothing is nothing new. Without even trying hard, I remember when that bastion for trendy young tweens Forever 21 lifted Minor Threat's logo for a shirt of their own. It's not limited to clothing either; remember the psychobilly Barbie that blantantly ripped off Horropop Patricia Day? The theft of existing punk imagery runs wild across all industries.

Now, I've got nothing against using punk fashion as an influence on modern designers. High end Paris fashion house Hermés uses pyramid studs on a lot of their designs, and for bored rich housewives who are willing to spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on an item that punks have been making for years out of thrifted goods and a handful of studs, that's all well and good. If you're dumb enough to spend that kind of cash then "the swindle continues," to quote Mr. Rotten.

It's not Marc Jacobs first foray into lifting influence from punk fashions. If you like, you can drop $600 on a pair of boots that look suspiciously like a pair of Dr. Martins, and will probably last half as long, too. I doubt you'll see these on the feet of anyone in the pit at a hardcore show, though.

Some early punk imagery was created for the purpose of selling high-end fashions. We probably wouldn't have the Sex Pistols if it weren't for Malcolm McLaren bringing the band together to serve as vitriol-laden clothes horses for his Sex boutique.

Punk has expanded beyond that, to become a medium about innovation, originality and credibility. Is it too much to ask that designers show that same amount of credibility, and use punk imagery in order to create something at least marginally original, without blatantly stealing any image they think is cool (whether or not it has racist connotations) and just hoping they'll get away with it?