Gul Ahmed Plagiarized Shehzil Malik & Gul Khan Truck Art & What Is This Behavior?!

Gul Ahmed, a well established clothing brand, just plagiarized the work of local artists in their latest collection.

Two local artists including Shehzil Malik and Gul Khan Truck Art have come forward to call out Gul Ahmed who has plagiarized their work.

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— Shehzil Malik (@shehzilm) February 22, 2020

Shehzil Malik, who uses pop art illustrations to raise voice against the issues faced by women, took to social media to report that the outlet has used her designs in their collection.

Later, Gul Ahmed posted on an apology over the matter through its Facebook page.

Apologising to the artist, Shehzil Malik, they wrote “Gulahmed greatly respects intellectual property rights. We have immediately removed the design from our collection and are attempting to contact the designer.”

While people were still furious over this, another artist has come forward to point out that his work was also plagiarised in the same collection.

Ali Gul from Gul Khan Truck Art took to social media to bring this issue to light and seek support from his followers.

Shehzil again took to Instagram to acknowledge that the outlet has apologised to her but from what it seems every illustration used in the collection was stolen from somebody else’s work.

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She asked the artists to speak up for their work and raise their voice against this unethical act of a well known company. She further hoped that the company would apologise and compensate other artists as well.

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Update on @gulahmedfashion . Gul Ahmed has contacted me, apologized and said that they've taken the garments off the market. Unfortunately, turns out that every piece of art used on those shirts is stolen by other artists (please tag yourself below). I hope the company apologizes and asks them for fair compensation as well. The reason I now go public when this happens is to let people know that you can't find art on Google images and use it in your designs. If we don't design/ draw from scratch, we are going to be stuck in a derivative loop where nothing new gets made in our field. Second, everything you find online- a piece of writing, a photograph, an artwork- has an owner with rights attached. Copyrights and Intellectual Property exist in Pakistan too. Third, just like writers know how hard it is to write, I know how hard it is to design. My earlier works look heavily inspired by my references, so I get the pressure of producing design for money and not yet having confidence in your own aesthetic. I don't want anyone fired over this. I would just say that if you make your version of things from scratch, you'll end up making something new. But if you just take another artist's work, you're exploiting them and the time they spent working on their craft. Lastly, thank you everyone for so much support, I'm genuinely overwhelmed!!!! My phone has been going insane past 2 days, I'm really touched. I'll get back to the company today and put this to rest. 🙏🏽

A post shared by shehzil malik (@shehzilm) on Feb 22, 2020 at 8:38pm PST