In the name of rasining money to raise the profile of the struggle in Darfur, Nadia Plesner, a painter, worked with Designers for Darfur to creat an image of a Darfur child in the style of Paris Hilton – complete with handbag that looks very similar to a Louis Vuitton monogram bag and a little dog.
Needless to say Louis Vuitton is not happy. They asked Plesner to “cease and desist” in February saying: “We cannot help noticing that the design of [your] product includes the reproduction of a bag infringing on LV’s intellectual property rights.”
But she hasn’t ceased and has since been slapped with a lawsuit.
“She used the accessories to show that this is what the world is paying attention to,” argued Malcolm Harris, creator of Designers for Darfur.
“My illustration Simple Living is an idea inspired by the media’s constant cover of completely meaningless things [ie. Paris Hilton], ” Plesner said. “My thought was: Since doing nothing but wearing designer bags and small ugly dogs apparently is enough to get you on a magazine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserves and needs attention.”
While her intentions were good, is it right for Plesner to use a high profile designer brand to promote her causes?
the real question here is How inappropriate is it for her to be using a naked Darfurian child to get her message across? WTF? WOuld the same be allowed, if a little white child were put on a t-shirt?
Do AFricans not deserve dignity? She’s victimizing Darfurian children all over again. Sick of these reckless white artists trying to make a point and thinking it’s cool, without consideration of people’s dignity.
Come on, in my country there’s lot of people who makes bags and accesories with something looking like the monogram of LV and this brand makes nothing. But now, when someone do something shocking that tells the world the truth, that makes people to open their eyes, they demand her. I think that this designer have been very brave to do that, I don’t think she’s victimizing african kids, in fact, I think that she is demanding the attention, the dignity and the rights of this children to have a better life.