Nashvillian Ashley Wolfe has a dream. A Dream of starting her own clothing brand, a line of goods with her own conceptual brand ‘Wolfmilk’. Over the years she’s dabbled in various tee shirt designs and online storefronts and even got her shop setup on her own domain. The problem? It’s not original. She‘s copying & pasting clip-art from the internet onto t-shirts, and selling them for $28+. The clip-art is either freely available on royalty free sites, and some is even original private works that were used without royalties or attribution (specifically an anime artist). The company description on their Facebook page reads: “Wolfmilk is based out of Nashville, TN and specializes in custom apparel.“
Let’s take a look at Wolfmilk’s new collection, and where the works came from – and you can decide if the brand is original, or simply a copy & paste job using other people’s original works for free, making money off their art, which is licensed freely for non-commercial use. Even her brand Instagram states: “Clothing Designer”. We’re not sure she quite understand what ‘designer’ means. It doesn’t mean copy someone else’s work, paste it onto an online t-shirt maker, and keep the profits. That’s called unethical. That’s called un-true to your brand. That’s called being an imitator. That’s called being fake. It’s not called a ‘designer’.
Perhaps these are Trump’s definition of ‘fresh and unique’ ?
Here’s the ‘Hieroglyphic Wolf Tee’ available on Wolfmilk – notice the ‘WOLFMILK’ added to the design as if they created it?
Hmm.. look what’s on royalty free images everywhere across the web:
OK, maybe once can be forgiven, so let’s take a look at the ‘starter tee’:
Another $28 design, just reversed from the public clip-art:
And of course, here’s some work for artist Jinji Ito that has not made all of his work available for commercial use:
And on the web…
So, Nashville, what are you willing to pay for a brand that is clip-art available on the web? Are you a Wolfmilk fan? Is Wolfmilk just a fraud?
We do have all the facts to back this up. Thanks for playing. At the time of publication the Davidson County Clerk confirmed that ‘Wolfmilk’ has no license to operate in Davidson County, despite them being a ‘Nashville based company’ on the website. They are also not registered with the State of Tennessee to accept or pay in taxes on the business or any sales made within the state.
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