Max Mara Fashion Group, a billion-dollar Italian couture fashion house, plagiarised traditional designs of the Oma ethnic minority group in their Spring/Summer 2019 Weekend collection and sold worldwide.

The Oma, a small ethnic community living in the hills of Phongsaly Province in northern Laos, embroider, stitch, and appliqué these colorful designs onto their traditional clothing, including head scarves, jackets, and leg wraps. Max Mara digitally duplicated and printed the designs onto dresses, skirts, and blouses, reducing painstaking, traditional motifs to factory-produced patterns. The colours, composition, shapes, and even placement, were identical to the original Oma designs, and Max Mara did not acknowledge the Oma in marketing, labeling, or display of the collection or pay compensation. TAEC discovered the plagiarism in early April 2019, and launched a media campaign (#MaxOma) to draw attention to the issue and pressure Max Mara to pull the line.
Oma and plagiarised designs by Max Mara

VIDEO: DOCUMENTATION

 What Happened? Oma vs. Max Mara.

The Oma of Laos and Their Traditional Textiles 

oma timeline of event

DETAILS BY YEAR

2019

April 2019 

  • Discovery of Oma plagiarised designs in Max Mara Weekend retail storefront by a former TAEC colleague.
  • Message of concern sent by TAEC to Max Mara via Facebook messenger and email.
  • Max Mara replies days later to TAEC that denies any wrongdoing, and asks TAEC to remove its posts on the topic. Messages are marked private and confidential, and come from the Max Mara legal team. 
  • TAEC launches #MaxOma awareness campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with astounding support from the public supporting a petition.
  • TAEC and Max Mara exchange communications on the issue. TAEC publishes two open letters sent to Max Mara. First Letter 10 April | Second Letter 13 April 
  • TAEC begins contacting retailers carrying the line to explain the issue. MatchesFashion.com and Miinto.com pull the line from their online shops.
  • TAEC sends a letter directly to Luigi Maramotti, Chairman of Max Mara, along with a petition. All communications are ignored.

May 2019

  • TAEC becomes a member of the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® (CIPRI). By joining this global movement, TAEC begins to network with other organisations around the world who support the rights of indigenous and ethnic communities over their traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). CIPRI and their global members foster cultural sustainability in commerce and fashion and advocate for cultural IP rights. 

June 2019

  • Realising that TAEC had no legal standing to the claim of plagiarism, Max Mara successfully ignored the controversy.

December 2019

  • TAEC pursues a Sudden Opportunity Grant from VOICE to assist the Oma in documenting their traditional designs and creating a prototype for other communities in Laos. 
2020

May 2020

  • TAEC awarded VOICE funding to collaborate with the Oma community to document their traditional designs and build a replicable and scalable model for other communities to protect their traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) from exploitation.

June 2020

  • TAEC co-founders and research team travel to Phongsaly to introduce the project concept to the Oma community in Ban Nanam.  The community gives their Free, Prior and Informed Consent to proceed with the project. 

August 2020

  • Oma artisans visit TAEC in Luang Prabang to begin documentation of their traditional designs. 
  • Lao New Wave Cinema begins documenting the project to create videos to share publicly as well as take photographs for the database. 

October 2020

December 2020

  • TAEC releases the first of three short videos about the project.
2021

January 2021

February 2021

March 2021

April 2021

  • A global Instagram awareness campaign, #notpublicdomain, launched on 19 April to coincide with Fashion Revolution Week, World IP Day, and CIPRI’s 3rd Anniversary. The campaign aimed to increase awareness, deliver tools, and engage with designers and fashion brands to stop cultural plagiarism. The accessible campaign visuals provided a comprehensive guide for advocacy actions by artisans, educators and cultural activists.
  • The Oma case and proposed database solution were publicly presented and discussed during Fashion Revolution Week 2021, in a webinar on, “Cultural Intellectual Property Rights and the Rights of Nature” organised by Fashion Revolution in collaboration with the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative. Over 600 attendees tuned in to the live event and over 1.4K views were registered within three weeks after the event. Watch on YouTube.

May 2021

June 2021

July 2021

September 2021

December 2021

  • CIPRI’s worldwide network of partners held their biannual meeting to map out activities for 2022, including a Cultural IP Month.
  • TAEC and CIPRI hire two remote interns – Rozela Franco and Lieve Cleach. They will be supporting awareness and fundraising efforts for the next three months.
2022

February 2022

April 2022

May 2022

December 2022

2023

April 2023

May 2023

  • Planning is underway for TAEC’s new special exhibition “Claiming Inspiration: Artisans, Culture, and Commercialisation“, opening late September 2023. This compelling new exhibit will focus on cultural intellectual property and the challenge of protecting traditional designs and artisan knowledge in an increasingly globalised, commercial world. We will explore what it means for ethnic communities and their cultural identity and livelihoods. Please follow our progress on Facebook. 
  • WIPO published an informative webinar on Intellectual Property and Traditional Producers recorded in May 2023.

September 2023

November 2023

  • TAEC presents on behalf of the Oma community at WIPO in Geneva in a dialogue about traditional designs and fashion. Co-Director, Tara Gujadhur, explains how intrinsic textiles are to the Oma identity, and how the 2019 misappropriation case led to the development of the Traditional Textile Design Database model.
  • Tara Gujadhur, TAEC Co-Director, and Khamchan Souvannalith, TAEC Researcher, spend nine days visiting all seven Oma villages to introduce the topic of traditional design protection, survey their village livelihoods and textile activities.
  • TAEC and the Oma of Nanam Village renew their Representation Agreement and Power of Attorney contracts, ensuring TAEC can continue to legally represent Nanam in ongoing work.

December 2023

2024

January 2024

February 2024

May 2024

Frequently Asked Questions

Max Mara used traditional designs of the Oma ethnic minority group in their Spring/Summer 2019 collection for the “Max Mara Weekend” clothing line, without acknowledgement, permission, or compensation. Oma women embroider, stitch, and appliqué these designs onto their traditional clothing, including head scarves, jackets, and leg wraps. Max Mara had these designs digitally duplicated and printed onto fabric, reducing painstaking, traditional motifs to factory-produced patterns. The colours, composition, shapes, and even placement, were identical to the Oma designs.

Absolutely.

A design is intellectual property, whether it’s sketched in a notebook by an illustrator, mocked up by a graphic designer on a computer, or embroidered on indigo-dyed cotton in a remote village in Laos. If it is generally understood that using someone’s photography or written work without acknowledgement or permission is wrong, why would a handcrafted textile design be any different? Over the past three decades, protecting the intellectual property (IP) rights of indigenous peoples and local communities has become recognised as essential, though how it should be done is much more debatable.




Public opinion. 

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for traditional knowledge, artwork, design, and ideas to be co-opted by multinational corporations who have the power and financial clout to either ignore IP claims or drag them out in court. However, we have seen that a public outcry, negative press, and boycotting of brands can pressure companies to admit wrongdoing and improve their practices.







In legal terminology, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) labels handicrafts and traditional designs as Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) and the knowledge associated to creating them as well as the meanings attached to them by the source communities, meaning the traditional manufacturing techniques, the symbols and meanings, as Traditional Knowledge (TK). 

The current conventional Intellectual Property Tools that are available at an international level, namely Copyrights, Trademarks, Geographical Indications, Patents or Industrial Designs, are not designed to protect Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions against misappropriation and misuse. Each of these tools has specific rules and requirements that must be followed in order to offer protection. For example, in order to benefit from Copyright protection a work must be of authorship — meaning that the author, or authors, of the work can be clearly identified; it must be original — and therefore not similar to an existing work; and it must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Whilst the first and third requirement could be demonstrated in the case of traditional designs, the second requirement — originality — is problematic to demonstrate since this traditional aesthetic is passed on from generation to generation and so are the meanings associated with the designs. 

Moreover, Copyright protection is limited in time whilst the very nature of TK and TCEs requires an indefinite protection duration since they are meant to be kept alive and transmitted from generation to generation. This is why at a global level WIPO itself suggests that a sui-generis (meaning a unique) protection mechanism for TK and TCEs protection be designed.

Another example worth mentioning is the Geographical Indication (GI). This tool refers to a sign that can be used on goods with a specific geographical origin and possessing qualities, reputation, or characteristics that are essentially attributable to that place of origin. The tool was designed originally for protecting agricultural products like Champagne, Aceto Balsamico di Modena, or Prosciutto di Parma/Parma Ham. Since GIs were not designed for the protection of non-agricultural products such as handicrafts and traditional designs, such protection also poses problems. Firstly, not all countries recognise GI protection for non-agricultural products, and even if they would, such protection would only help in the case of marketing a product as coming from that region. For example, a GI protection for Oma textiles would only be effective if a fashion company would try to sell their products and name them Oma textiles, but does not stop a company from copying Oma designs, creating the Oma embroidery by machine instead of manually, and selling these products under their own label without crediting or compensating the Oma community. 

In fact, in most countries TK and TCEs fall outside the scope of protection of Conventional IP Tools and are considered as pertaining to the public domain, meaning that they can be used and exploited freely, by anyone, without the consent, credit or compensation of the source communities. 

Thus, Conventional IP Tools prove limited with regards to the protection of TK and TCEs and are not enabling cultural sustainability and cultural survival. This is why we support and advocate for the creation of a unique legal protection mechanism that is designed specifically for TK and TCEs.

In conclusion, Conventional IP Tools can offer some degree of protection, but not the kind that would ensure local and ethinic communities like the Oma are protected against cultural appropriation. An interesting resource for further research can be found here.

They could have approached the Oma community or artisans directly, and ordered their handmade work for a fair price to incorporate into their clothing, generating income for the community. There are organisations that work with brands to help link them to artisan groups and social enterprises in developing countries to collaborate. These partnerships can result in wonderfully creative products that also generate great visibility and earnings for both the brand and the communities. 

Max Mara and all brands can follow the 3Cs’ Rule: Consent. Credit. Compensation©. Developed by the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative®, the 3Cs’ Rule guides best practices for drawing inspiration from cultural heritage. Using this framework, fashion, and textile industry stakeholders have the guarantee that inspiration will not turn into appropriation. 

  • Consent: Obtain the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the craftsperson or community
  • Credit: Acknowledge the source community and inspiration
  • Compensation: Engage in benefit-sharing, which can be monetary or non-monetary

The Oma are proud of their heritage and identity. They were initially gratified to see that their designs were being admired in Europe, but then dismayed that no one knew that these designs were Oma. They also did not appreciate that their artisans were not involved in any of the production of the clothing and patterns, and thus, did not earn any income from. Finally, they were unhappy with some of the placement of the designs. One specific motif combination is always used on headdresses. On the Max Mara designs, they were used on the bottom of long dresses, near the feet. This was felt to be inappropriate and disrespectful. 

“Our grandparents passed down these traditions to our parents, and our parents to us. We are the Oma people, and we preserve our culture by making and wearing our traditional clothes.” – Khampheng Loma, Head of Nanam Village

Plagiarism is wrong, whether the plagiarised feel wronged or not. Letting this kind of corporate behaviour go unchecked is dangerous, as it sends the message that creative work that is traditional and shared by a community and culture in the developing world does not deserve the same kind of protections given to contemporary designs by individual “artists” in the West. Companies can harvest motifs, materials, and ideas freely from communities that lack the educational, financial, and technological resources to have their rights recognised.

TAEC has worked with the Oma since 2010, when the organisation was hired to survey their crafts and identify potential income-generating opportunities for their artisans. Most recently, TAEC has worked with them on documenting their traditional music and new year’s celebrations. Nanam Village is an approximately 9 hour drive from Luang Prabang, part of it unpaved, and is by far the most remote village (of 30 across Laos) that TAEC works with.

On Tuesday, 2 April 2019, a friend and former colleague was in Zagreb, Croatia, and saw the designs through a Max Mara shop window. She immediately shared pictures with the TAEC team. Amazed, TAEC initially thought it might be actual handcrafted work from the Oma that was incorporated into the clothing. Upon further examination, it became clear that not only were the Oma not credited in the name of the garment, on tags, or online, but the motifs were simply digitally reproduced and mass-printed. TAEC immediately reached out to Max Mara’s headquarters through various e-mail addresses and social media channels. After a week with no response, TAEC began the #MaxOma social media campaign. That was also how TAEC and the Oma got in touch with the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® and their body of expertise around this issue.

The Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® is designed to be a worldwide movement supporting the recognition of cultural IP rights for craftsmen and women who are the custodians and transmitters of traditional garments, traditional designs and traditional manufacturing techniques.

​This initiative was born from the need to eliminate culturally appropriative behavior in the fashion industry and aims to act as mediator between the interests of fashion businesses and those of artisans and traditional creative communities. ​The organisation supports cultural sustainability and fashion as a form of education and promotion of cultural heritage and traditional cultural expressions.

Learn more – TEDx Talk Cultural Fashion: Transform the Fashion Industry from Villain to Hero by Monica Bota-Moisin

 

After Max Mara plagiarised traditional Oma designs TAEC launched a strong media campaign (#MaxOma), but the company refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Since then, TAEC has partnered with the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® (CIPRI) and was awarded a Voice Sudden Opportunity Grant in May 2020 to further our work in this area. With this funding, TAEC has been working with Oma of Nanam Village to document their traditional motifs, holding workshops with the Lao Handicrafts Association to raise awareness among other artisan groups, creating educational videos, and developing a model to defend cultural intellectual property rights.

Photos and progress of the project activities are on our Facebook page!

TAEC and the Oma community created a database of traditional designs and how this model can be used in other communities to help secure Cultural IP Rights.

This project ended in May 2021, but TAEC continues working on this issue with CIPRI, the Lao Handicrafts Association, artisans and other partners. 

April 2022 has been designated Cultural Intellectual Property Awareness Month. Find out more information on events and resources on the CIPRI website. TAEC hosted a free webinar on 23 April 2022 – Respecting Tradition: Ethical Textile Design and Inspiration with indigenous designers from the Philippines and USA. You can watch and share from YouTube here.

If you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting our work in this field, please contact us!

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