It should have been a landmark week for Finnish fashion brand Makia, as the company launched a capsule collection with CupOfTherapy to raise awareness of mental health issues.
Instead, the trendy Helsinki-based clothing company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, forced to defend its apparent use of some well-known logos in their own designs.
On Monday the company announced it was withdrawing its Station clothing line because the logo was too similar to a local sailing club.
“Raise your hand if you made a mistake” Makia wrote on its official Facebook page.
“Today we have pulled the products of the Station clothing line from our own channels, and stopped their production. We are sorry for our mistake”.
Makia also donated €5000 to a Baltic Sea foundation as a sign of good faith.
More logos under scrutiny
However the issue with Makia’s logos doesn’t end there.
The company has been accused of appropriating two more logos and incorporating them into clothing line brand designs.
“We have agreed not to comment on individual cases, but I would like to say: we are cooperative. We apologize. We are doing our best to make them happy as well” Makia Creative Director Totti Nyberg tells MTV News in an interview.
The company says as a street wear brand, using references from other brands and organisations is part of their design culture, as the get inspiration from many sources.
Makia says out of more than 20,000 garments designed in the last two decades, and partnered with more than a dozen organisations, only 88 items have been “inspired by non-agreed collaborations”.
