Shein and Frida Kahlo worked together
Shein, a big name in fast fashion, put out a new line Thursday that was inspired by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. But the Chinese online store is working with the Frida Kahlo Corporation, a Panamanian licensing and commercialization company that has been fighting with the artist's family over trademark and property rights for almost ten years. The Spanish newspaper El Pais was the first to report that Shein and Frida Kahlo were working together.
The new project seems to be the latest step in a long-running fight between FKC and some of Kahlo's family members. Frida Kahlo died in 1954 without leaving a will. Mexican law says that Kahlo's property rights were passed on to her niece, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo. In 2003, Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo's daughter, was given power of attorney over these rights. The next year, Pinedo and others started The Frida Kahlo Corp. Their main goal was to "license and sell the "Frida Kahlo" brand all over the world."
Licenses and family stories
In recent years, however, Kahlo's great-niece Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo and her daughter Mara de Anda Romeo have been fighting with FKC over licensing rights and trademarks for assets like the artist's image. In 2018, Mattel made a Barbie doll that looked like the late Mexican painter. Her family argued in a Mexican court that FKC did not have permission to do this. A judge sided with them and stopped selling the doll in the country, but it sold out everywhere else. In September 2016, a court in Florida threw out a lawsuit between the Frida Kahlo Corporation and Kahlo's family. Two months before that, Kahlo's family asked the sportswear company Puma to stop selling a line of clothes that were based on her designs.
Shein, on the other hand, has been criticized for putting out clothes quickly, having a reputation for stealing designs often, and, most recently, for having exploitative working conditions. Monday, an investigation by the British TV network Channel 4 showed that Shein's factories don't have set production hours, and workers only get paid $3 an hour.
Jean Dubreil