On April 29, our favorite jewelry designer, Wendy Brandes, wrote on her blog: ‘I’m SMH at Topshop’s Version of My Swear Rings’. In her post, she explained: ‘The sterling-silver swear-ring set from my WENDYB by Wendy Brandes line has been one of my most popular designs since I introduced it at a designer friend’s runway show in 2008.’ She just realized a huge corporate chain store was selling swear rings looking just like hers: ‘ I admit that I find the execution of this idea a bit more similar to mine than I would like‘.

Many people blogged and tweeted their support to Wendy, we even launched a #TeamWendy on Twitter, Wendy’s PR person, Krista Blair placed a call to Topshop and then a few days later, the shop agreed to remove the product from their web site and apologized: ‘The @WendyBrandes style in question has been removed from sale. We apologise for any misinterpretation and its similarity to Wendy’s work.‘

All’s well that ends well. On May 1st, Wendy posted: ‘I’m convinced that the swift action was due in no small part to the support I received  from people around the world. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who tweeted and blogged on my behalf. Social media can be a great incentive to do the right thing.’ You’re welcome Wendy and we hope this ‘misfortune’ brought you free publicity and a boost in sales.

This post gives us the opportunity to support all independent designers. We know how hard they all work and how hard it is to be the victim of copycats. It happened to Max Dana, to Wendy Brandes and to many others and we hope these copycat designs will be denounced as often as possible.

So just to be sure you will go to the right place to get your swear rings, follow this link to Wendy Brandes swear rings!

PS: You should also check the Onyx Skull Ring, we fell for it in 2009 🙂