Sorrywatch fam! We have an excellent corporate apology to share! And it’s from a brand Sumac and Snarly both love!

Nooworks is a small, woman-owned company in California that manufactures wildly patterned, delightful textiles. (The company name is derived from the owner’s dog, The Noo-Noo, which pleases us Teletubbies fans.) Nooworks collaborates with independent artists whose limited-edition designs are printed on plant-based fabrics at an industrial rotary plant in Los Angeles and turned into clothing at a factory in Oakland. Snarly’s husband is on his way to Burning Man as we speak with two of the three Nooworks jumpsuits for which they share custody.

The company has rabid fans who await new patterns while salivating. (It also has non-fans who point out that pieces can fit inconsistently, that sizing is weird and skews small, and that some of the fabrics pill too easily. And Nooworks isn’t cheap – but ethically made clothing shouldn’t be. Snarly often buys hers on resale sites.)

Anyhoo. The apology story. Last Friday on Instagram, Nooworks teased the drop of a bright yellow fabric covered in folk-arty leopards and snakes, called Serpentine, created by a blonde California surfer-food stylist-designer of Swedish heritage. Within moments of the post’s appearance, customers began pointing out that the design was super-duper … reminiscent of the work of Brazilian designer João Incerti.

 

The size and shape of the snake, the coils, the placement of the eyes, the orientation and spacing of the jagged triangle border around the snake are identical. One savvy Instagram detective noted that the black and white stars and moons in the new Nooworks print were exactly the same as the stars and moons in a different older Incerti work, and the leaves around the cheetahs matched precisely to the leaves in that same Incerti work. Commenters also went to the California artist’s site and found multiple works that mapped unnervingly to the works of artists on the site Artfully Walls.

Nooworks replied in comments that they were looking into the situation. The artist who’d done the print for Nooworks took her store’s site down and made all her social media accounts private. Nooworks told commenters it had reached out to Incerti but hadn’t yet heard back, and that it “certainly won’t be profiting off of this and are looking to put the financial funds towards the best use. Artist compensation included.” Commenters bayed for blood. What exactly did “financial funds” mean? Why was Nooworks posting anything before hearing from Incenti? How dare they sell this work at all? Eventually, Incerti himself commented:

Hey! Thanks for sharing my work ❤️ Unfortunately copy is very common nowadays with the internet, but I’m happy that you didn’t do it on purpose, different then many others brands, big and small ones! It’s unbelievable sometimes 😢 I didn’t know your brand before, wish you success on your journey :)❤️

Within a few hours, Nooworks shared a Notes App statement saying they were postponing the release.

The text reads: We want to start with our sincerest apologies. We are so grateful for our community for bringing this to our attention. We were made aware yesterday that some artwork in our newest print has been heavily influenced by another artist. We were just made aware of this artist yesterday and have since reached out to them in hopes of finding a positive resolution. We’ve yet to hear back but also understand that they really have no liability to get back to us since this is truly not their problem to fix. We’re uncomfortable releasing this print under any artists name and have made the decision to donate 100% of the profits to the following two organizations: @rainforestus and @yeahart_ . We plan to release all product we have on the site Monday 8/21 at 5am. In addition we’ve brought back the 20% off sale which will apply to all full priced products because we cannot stand behind this product 100%. Sale is active now and applicable to all full priced NW. We understand a larger company would likely put these in landfill but we work really hard to be environmentally conscious in our business practices so that didn’t feel right either. We’ve unfortunately completed production on this print and all goods are already in our warehouse. It is one of our main company values to work with and support original artists. Jen and I are so sorry we missed this sooner and truly hope we can find a positive outcome to a horrible situation.

(Some text is missing from the screenshot, but it appears in the body of the post, above.)

Soon there was an addition to the image: “UPDATE: the drop will be on Monday with the real artists, @o_incerti ‘s permission. We’re so sorry and have been working as fast and diligently as we can to supply you with some answer.”

Nooworks also sent an email to customers:

On Instagram, yelling continued. Some commenters applauded Nooworks’s transparency and attempts to do the right thing. Others felt that until there was complete resolution, Nooworks shouldn’t be making statements at all. Some weren’t sure from the wording of Nooworks’s statements whether Incerti was being paid; some wanted the fabric not to be sold at all; some wanted Incerti to pick the charities the sale would support.

The next day, Saturday, there was an update: “The drop will be on Monday with the real artist, @o_incerti‘s permission. We’re so sorry and have been working as fast and diligently as we can to supply you with some answer.”

The artist who made the yellow Nooworks print remained silent. But her site reappeared, without the works that commenters had noted were wildly similar to ones on Artfully Walls. (She’s still selling items that feel derivative of Commes des Garcons’ hearts with eyes, but they’re not direct copies.) Some of her friends braved Nooworks’s Instagram to point out that snakes and leopards are common in art right now, that their friend was an ethical person, that going private and remaining silent were necessary responses to avoid being bullied by an angry mob, and that a lot of artists’ work is similar because that’s the nature of art. All points worthy of discussion … though they don’t address the fact that such EXACT copying is never OK. We’ll update this post if she makes a statement.

SorryWatch is willing to entertain the idea that this artist genuinely didn’t understand that what she did was wrong. She changed the snake’s colors. She put elements from different Incenti works into the same work. Perhaps she thought remixing constituted fair use. Perhaps she thought “everyone does it.” Here’s a parallel: Many people don’t believe that pasting text from Wikipedia, with slight rephrasing, is plagiarism. Many people don’t understand that rewriting ChatGPT a bit isn’t creating new work. Not all artists or consumers agree on the placement of the border between influence and full-on copying.

Yesterday, the yellow print — its name no longer Serpentine — appeared on Nooworks’ site. On Instagram, an announcement:

It’s here: DESERT DISASTER is officially out! All profits from this print will be donated to the Rainforest Foundation to help Indigenous and traditional peoples of the world’s rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and uphold their rights and Yeah Arts, funding art education making arts education more inclusive, accessible and relevant. You can shop this print in store as well! We originally planned to drop this over 3 weeks so there are still a few styles that are in various stages of production which we listed in our stories with dates!

They also noted that Incerti would be paid. And extended the offer of 20% off everything on the site as a kind of apology to customers.

We think Nooworks handled this really well. Let’s look at our 6.5-part rubric, shall we?

1. Say you’re sorry.
2. For what you did.
3. Show you understand why it was bad.
4. Only explain if you need to; don’t make excuses.
5. Say why it won’t happen again.
6. Offer to make up for it.

Six and a half. Listen.

Nooworks crushed five and a half of the steps! We’re really impressed by the company’s efforts to keep the community posted, in spite of customers’ strong emotions and conflicting demands. Not making a profit on this was the right thing to do; not selling it at all (the clothes were already in production) is too much to ask.

What could the company have handled better? Only step 5: How will they insure this won’t happen again? In future, Nooworks will have to do image searches, or more EXTENSIVE image searches than they’ve been doing, to ensure that the designers they collaborate with are submitting original work. (We’re sure the artists have to sign something saying their prints are original. The problem is that some folks may not understand what that means, and others may lie.) And as one Instagram commenter noted, “Generative AI is only going to make this situation more common.” Passing off other people’s work as your own is only getting easier. Some companies even welcome computer-generated work, because it’s cheaper (hello, movie and TV studios!). Fun with capitalism!

Nooworks also might take this opportunity to think harder about contracting with white artists who play with indigenous visual themes. So many companies produce art that invokes motifs and stories from marginalized communities but isn’t made by people from those communities, the folks whose history is being referenced (and profited from). Even when the intention is purportedly positive — to honor a tradition — or the artist doesn’t completely comprehend that they’re ripping off a heritage and visual language that isn’t theirs, it’s the wrong thing to do.

Ironically, it’s not clear that Incerti (who has created prints for the Brazilian fashion label FARM Rio, for Anthropologie, and for Bombay Sapphire) is an indigenous artist himself. The complexity! Snarly has a ton of Brazilian family — Mr. Snarly’s grandfather, fleeing Heidelberg shortly before Kristallnacht in 1938, wound up in Indiana, but his great-grandmother, great-aunt, and great-uncle all wound up in Brazil, and generations later, there’s a wide array of Sao Paulo cousins. They’re native Portuguese speakers and don’t look like stereotypical Eastern European or German Jews. But does that give them the authority to deploy imagery from indigenous South American art in their work? (You tell us.) Then again, the history of our own American art forms, Broadway musicals and jazz, are rife with appropriation from African and African American culture (and in Broadway’s case, also Eastern European Jewish melodies) – the line between appropriation and adaptation, between acculturation and abscondence, can be mighty hard to discern.

Snarly’s fave Nooworks prints feature glorious midcentury-vibe-y flowers, psychedelic lobsters, and purple leopard print. She stalks Poshmark for a dress in a discontinued pink-and-black print by cartoonist Jay Howell, depicting witches hats, squiggles, hearts, mice and lumpy skulls — it reminds her of weird 1970s French comic books. Oh, and then there’s that banana print! A nifty thing about Nooworks is how stylistically wide-ranging these patterns are, with good representation of artists from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. There’s just no need for “ethnic” designs that don’t represent the actual background of the artist. Hire folks from the cultures being referenced.

(Snarly’s culture is mushrooms.)

The upshot is that Nooworks handled a rotten situation beautifully, under a ton of pressure. Bigger companies could learn a lot from them about good apologies and about making things right.