Matilda Djerf copied a photoshoot.
Is it THAT important? Yes it is.
Unless you have been living under a rock, one that if you have managed to avoid all the noise of social influencers please scooch over I would love to join you, then you will likely know who Matilda Djerf is. Which is a very famous influencer & founder of the brand Djerf Avenue (which I will put my arms up & admit I have bought from) who recently had quite the fall from grace after a bunch of previous & current employees did an exposee on her treatment of them as part of a large Swedish news outlet. That is something you can look at in your own time.
What I want to talk about is how their most recent photoshoot, was a carbon copy of another campaign & what this means in the world of photography & wider creative industry.
Let’s set the scene.
I was perusing through social media when I came across this now infamous photoshoot for Matilda Djerf’s newest collaboration as part of what they have coined her ‘bday’ drop. This involved Matilda laying across & posing within a large seashell, as part of a set in a studio shoot, including a printed backdrop, sand etc- see below.
Now ever since the above infamous exposee I do like to take a peruse through Matilda’s comment section. Here I came across the below comment from set designer & prop stylist Ashley Marcos which reads
“This is not your design. This is a design of mine, that was executed for a @slipsilkpillowcase campaign. You have plagiarised my design, with no credit. It is exactly the same (but not finished as well, I might add). It’s a pity you weren’t able to have your team come up with something original.”
With a quite formidable rise of people exposing larger brands & corporations for copying either their products or ideas, some of which are incredibly valid & others being a stretch I decided to take a look myself to see the likeness between the two shoots to warrant such a comment. And let me tell you, her anger is incredibly valid.
Below you will see (side by side) the shoot by the Djerf Avenue team & then the shoot Ashley was part of for Slip Silk Pillowcase and the resemblance supersedes uncanny- it is essentially a carbon copy.
Now not only is this shoot a similar creative concept, a beautiful woman lying in a large shell, but the actual shell itself is a (in my opinion cheaper looking) reproduction of the exact same prop- framed in the same manner, with a similar overall mood & lighting palette. The only two differences are that the original was shot on location, see BTS below, & Matilda is lying the other way round. That is it.
As you can imagine this caused, within this very small corner of the internet, uproar. Comments were requesting credit, & Ashley took to Instagram stories to voice her frustration- as she rightly should.
The Djerf Avenue team (as per Ashley’s stories- screenshots below) voiced that they thought that this was a vintage photo from a magazine. Which is a very bold claim given that it not only was shot a year ago as a commercial campaign for Silk Slip a brand boasting over 295k followers on Instagram but it was shot by THE Brydie Mack aka @wolfclubwolfclub & pinned on her page. So, whilst I would love to share the naiivety here & believe that her dreamy, vintage palette confused their team into thinking this was from a vintage magazine, it doesn’t track in my personal opinion.
But as Ashley again RIGHTLY points out, even if it used as inspiration & believed to have been a vintage one at that, what they have done is a direct copy of both the concept and the actual prop itself. It appears that they have asked for the shell to have been made as a direct replica, which no matter when an inspiration was made should not be the case (unless in rare instances linked to homage).
As such, Matilda Djerf in response shared a number of Instagram stories sharing the names of both Ashley and Brydie as the original creators who her team took ‘inspiration’ from (see screenshots below)- but is this really enough here?
Now more than ever with the range of artists across the globe that we have access to, inspiration can be far & wide but we have to remember that it is INSPIRATION. And we have all been there & seen campaigns released where we can see quite clearly what images were in the original board, but to be so direct in the mimicking here is brash.
Anyone outside of the creative or more specifically photography industry may think ‘well what is the issue here’ ‘why kick up such a fuss’. Because you are not aware of the time, energy & skill that is poured into shoots of this nature, where artists have built their entire career cultivating a style or a niche only for it to be replicated without their involvement, credit or compensation.
To make it easier to understand & to keep Djerf Avenue in the conversation to also showcase even more of the hypocrisy here. Let us not forget that this is the brand who got a bunch of influencers videos taken off of platforms for highlighting ‘dupes’ of their pyjamas, sending them dm’s & emails flagging copyright issues (read more here). Djerf Avenue had been known for these printed pyjamas with floral & fruit designs, which naturally Amazon based companies were creating cheaper dupes of & like any product people were flagging for those who could not afford the original. Those individuals were then reported by an external IP firm (hired by Djerf Avenue) to Tik Tok for violating the Tik Tok community guidelines that prohibit “posting, sharing, or sending any content that violates or infringes upon someone else’s copyrights, trademarks or other IP rights.”
But lo and behold they have done the exact same thing with this photoshoot.
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Whilst it may not be a physical product, to an artist/ photographer/ set designer or any creative what they create IS THEIR PRODUCT. So to copy, steal or replicate that is the exact same as a brand recreating a product and selling it as their own. Do not try to tell me different.
However, what will the next steps be here? I do not know. Whether Ashley will seek financial compensation here is a mystery & how successful she will be is also up in the air. Copyright law in this case is unfortunately not that black & white for artists as it is for products.
But if I am going to ask you to take anything from this article, as I know I have a lot of photographers & creatives here. Remember that when you are building your boards, finding your references & creating your next shoot that those images you collate are there as inspiration but not as a blueprint. We as creatives have to do our due diligence and create enough distance between what inspired an idea to its execution. Otherwise what you produce will truly never be yours.
And we truly have all been there, especially with clients who ask you to ‘copy this picture’ as their only direction for a campaign, but all you have to say is that ‘copyright law does apply here so I cannot replicate this image but here is a great way we can use that as a reference to build from.’
Let me know your thoughts on the above & tell me some other examples where photography has been copied for the sake of commercial gain- I would love to do a follow up here.
If you liked what you read why not subscribe or check out some of my other articles below- we at the Warren are all about photography & the creative industry so if that is your interest/ income we have a lot more waiting for you.
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I'm disappointed but not entirely surprised. I've always felt that Djerf Avenue seems like a much more expensive version of things anyone could find in a thrift store. If I wanted an oversized blazer or a shirt that badly, I'd just take it from my boyfriends closet. Basically, everything she does feels derivative. If someone less beautiful was selling the same thing, I'm not sure how well the brand would do. Given her lack of originiality, I'm more surprised that Matilda is able to survive one PR crisis after another, especially after that Aftonbladet exposé on how she treats employees.
Thank you for writing this! As a graphic designer who works in the fashion/retail industry, I see this happen all too often. It's one thing to be inspired by another creative's work and make it your own, but it's an entirely different thing to copy the work 1:1 without acknowledging the inspiration. I've seen brands ripoff photoshoots from Emily Oberg, for example, by using identical poses, studio setting/lighting, and styling. After working in the fashion industry for a few years I've become disillusioned with most of the people who work for large brands, a lot of them are lacking the passion to create their own original work.