[dropcap size=big]O[/dropcap]ver four dozen protestors gathered in front of the Lauren Moshi store in West Hollywood on Saturday afternoon to protest the designer’s appropriation of local artists’ work.
Xiana Tlacotl, the organizer of the protest, is an activist, designer, and musician. She’s also a friend of Danny Fuentes, a local artist and the owner and curator of Lethal Amounts, an art gallery, clothing line, and nightlife promoter, including working as an assistant tour manager for Glenn Danzig and working as Morrissey's personal bodyguard. Fuentes is one of several artists whose work has been appropriated by Moshi’s line, along with local photographer Estevan Oriol, whose 1995 photo of “L.A. Fingers” has been branded on T-shirts by numerous brands and designers, including Lauren Moshi.
Fuentes’ brand began with a logo: two safety pins opened and layered in the shape of an “L” and an “A.” L.A. Magazine reported last month that in 2018, Fuentes realized Moshi had started using a startlingly similar version of his logo on t-shirts, a logo that he’d registered in 2012 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That July, he sent a cease and desist letter to Lauren Moshi. In return, she sued him, claiming that Fuentes didn’t have the right to the trademark. The nearly year-long legal battle that ensued drained Fuentes financially and otherwise, something Tlacotl points out as seeming very intentional on Moshi’s part.