The Shameless Steve Madden Knockoff Machine

Manolo says, several months ago the Manolo pointed out the audacious shamelessness of the Steve Madden shoe company, who not content to steal the shoe design, literally pirated the publicity photo from Saks Fifth Ave, in the attempt to sell peoples the cheaply fake Louboutin knockoffs.

Now comes yet another entry in the ledger of shame from Steve Madden, this time the ridiculous attempt to copy-cat the Sportiletto, the very distinctive stiletto shoe from Balenciaga.

As the Manolo’s internet friend Stacy says.

Here’s the problem, the copycat isn’t an illegal manufacturing company that specializes in secretly producing knockoff goods, it’s popular shoe designer Steve Madden. How awful is it when a designer blatantly plagiarizes another designer’s work? Even though the two labels are eons away from each other in price, reputation, quality and target buyer, it seems really wrong. It might not be so bad if the concept of making a shoe from a bunch of tennis shoe scraps had trickled down the design ladder and Steve Madden reinterpreted it in a different way (designers borrow from each other all the time and hardly any idea is a completely new idea these days), but to use the same colors and details, from the pink and black mesh down to the green buckle, is pretty unbelievable.

Unbelievable, unimaginative, unethical, and ultimately shameless.

P.S. Thanks to the Manolo’s internet friend Wannabe for alerting the Manolo to this.

0