Anyone hoping that wokeness was quite dead may need to wake up. While it’s taken a beating in some places, the fashion industry continues to be a battleground. Between the dumb controversy over the American Eagle ad and this latest ‘outrage’ over a Mexican designer ‘culturally appropriating’ a Mexican sandal for Adidas, fashion is still woke.
Mexican authorities are accusing sportswear company Adidas of plagiarizing artisans in southern Mexico, alleging that a new sandal design is strikingly similar to the traditional indigenous footwear known as huaraches.
According to Mexican authorities, Adidas’ design contains elements that are part of the cultural heritage of the Zapotec Indigenous communities in Oaxaca, particularly in the town of Villa Hidalgo de Yalálag.
How does one “plagiarize” a ‘traditional; design? If we’re going to allow every town or tribe that came up with some design or look to maintain control over it for a thousand years, we’d still be in the dark ages.
Human progress depends on the spread of ideas. That’s why we can wear silk without depending on Chinese silkworms and have indoor plumbing without paying royalties to the Roman Empire.
The Adidas designer, Willy Chavarria, who already apologized, is Mexican. So has Adidas and that just emboldens the parasites.
In a public letter to Adidas leadership, Oaxaca state Gov. Salomón Jara Cruz criticized the company’s design, saying that “creative inspiration” is not a valid justification for using cultural expressions that “provide identity to communities.”
If your community gets its identity from a shoe, rethink the community.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that Adidas was already in talks with authorities in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to provide “compensation for the people who were plagiarized,” and that her government was preparing legal reforms to prevent the copying of Mexican handicrafts.
That will teach anyone to show any interest in Mexican handicrafts ever again.
