Looks like Forever 21 won’t be as ‘forever’ as they expected to be. Shortly after announcing that the company may be filing for bankruptcy, it has now been made public that Forever 21 is being sued by Ariana Grande for $10 million.
The drama between the Grammy award-winning singer and Forever 21 started sometime during late 2018 to early 2019 when the two were negotiating to have Grande be featured in an advertising campaign. According to Grande’s team, the deal fell through because Forever 21 didn’t want “to pay the fair market value for a celebrity of Ms. Grande’s stature.”
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Now, Ariana Grande has gone to greener pastures and partnered with H&M (one of Forever 21’s top competitors) and has her merchandise for her album “Sweetner” on sale in their stores.
Seemingly burned by this and wanting to keep pace with their competition, Forever 21 has made their own advertising campaigns with a little Ariana Grande flair to them. They took inspiration from the color scheme and clothing in Grande’s popular music video ‘7 Rings’ and even used catchphrases that have been made popular from the artist’s recent album such as “I Want It. I Got It.” and “Gee Thanks, Just Bought It.”
But the detail that seemed to make Miss Grande the most upset, was Forever 21 hiring a model that bears a striking resemblance to the pop star.
Ariana Grande’s lawyers have publicly stated that they believe Forever 21 deliberately had a “misleading campaign across its website and social media platforms primarily in January and February 2019.”
But is Ariana Grande really the victim here?
In a surprising twist, Farrah Moan, who is a popular drag queen that has been featured on RuPaul’s Drag Race, claimed Ariana Grande stole from her in the first place.
Farrah took to twitter to point out the fact that Ariana Grande shouldn’t be so hypocritical since she has proof that Grande’s team used a picture of her outfit to design Grande’s corset outfit for her ‘7 Rings’ video. It’s very common for Drag Queens to design and make their own outfits, so they take fashion theft very seriously. Stealing from a queer artist may not be a good look for Grande, considering she’s built a reputation for herself as a queer ally, and has even performed ‘7 Rings’ at the Manchester Pride Festival.
Despite being frustrated with the hypocrisy of Grande’s team suing Forever 21 for copying her style, Farrah clarified that she has no issue with the pop star and knows that this is an action her team took that the singer probably had no knowledge of.
Ariana should give me a cut of that 10M since her team literally sent a pic of me to the designer and paid them to copy my look from as4. (Finally met the designer and got told the Tea) I guess stealing from queer artists for profit is fine tho 🤷🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/1smGr8K4G0
— 👑 Farrah Moan (@farrahrized) September 4, 2019
What do you guys think? Is Forever 21 stealing from Grande? Is Grande stealing from Farrah? Who’s the real victim here?