Is it possible to find which legitimate clothing retailer a ripoff label is copying?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife sent me a link to a linen shirt a few days ago and asked if I liked it.

Here it is:

My answer was an enthusiastic yes. I browsed around the site a little more and saw half a dozen shirts I’d happily wear without hesitation. The style is right up my alley.

Then I looked a little closer. First, the price is way too low for a quality linen shirt. Then I noticed that all the images are just templates, the same five or six plain white garments over and over with varying image overlays, ergo unrepresentative of the actual products. A quick google about the site confirms that it’s a cheap Chinese print-to-order outfit with lots of unhappy customers. Ah well, too bad.

But I still like the design sensibility. I assume that places like this are basically ripping off better-established brands and labels, either in a general stylistic sense or often actual specific designs, so it should be possible to work backward and find the original inspiration, allowing me to buy these shirts in decent quality from legitimate sellers. They won’t be 25 euros, obviously, as they are here, but then, they shouldn’t be.

The problem is, I don’t know how to do that. Is there a trick? A method? If I start with a handful of representative designs from this (or any other) bullshit scam site, is there a trail to follow to find who they stole them from?

Please note I’m asking this question generally, not looking solely for specific recommendations on where to find just the linked shirt. The problem of ripoff retailers is pervasive, so I’m hoping there’s some kind of process, or information source, or something else that provides a general solution across many use cases, rather than for this article or this site specifically.

(Wasn’t sure about the forum on this. It’s about clothing and fashion so I considered the Cafe, but I’m also looking for genuine information so I considered FQ. In the end I thought it was subjective enough that IMHO was sufficient. Feel free to move as judged appropriate.)

2

Postscript: Before anyone suggests it, yes I already tried the obvious reverse image search; it simply pulls up a handful of websites selling the exact same stuff at the same price, no doubt just alternatively-branded tentacles of the same producer behind the scenes. I’m looking for a deeper, better resource than that.

3

It’s entirely possible that there is no original higher-end seller. It could be just a generic white shirt that the rip-off sites are using.

4

Well, but I’m not looking for the original white shirt, I’m looking for shirts featuring the indicated prints (or similar style). I assume the ripoff sites don’t have designers, and stole the prints from somewhere else. That is what I’m searching for.

5

ISTM the shirt makers could have just gone with cheap shirts and then ripped off the pictures to put on them. The only original idea they had is to put this picture on that shirt.

6

There was a Planet Money episode on these kind of retailers a while back. No info on where they were getting their designs from, though.

7

There’s t-shirt sites where the designs are created by independent people who then get a slice of the sales on that shirt. Could this work the same? I say “people” and not “artists” since it’s possible designs are still being stolen or AI generated and uploaded as shirt options on the site. But, like so many other places these days, you don’t hire formal workers, you just make it a gig where the designer only gets paid if you’re getting paid.

Edit: I don’t mean submitting designs to Comstylish since they’re probably just one branch of a larger corporate tree, but rather submitting to some sort of clearinghouse or more generic entity to be used for this stuff.

8

I wouldn’t assume an “original” exists. Sure, the shirts themselves probably have a more expensive version. But the art is probably added by them from something available online.

I suspect those who sell a quality linen shirt are not the type to print things on them.

9

You might find the original maker’s name in the page’s keywords.

10

I just did a reverse image search and got a lot of results. You can try the same thing, go through them and see if any of the hits are legitimate.

11

I’d say your best shot is skimming the reviews and hoping someone IDs the designer.

12

Whew. Shopping online, especially for clothing, is such a slog right now. It’s just 90% ripoffs.

13

You just need a knowledgeable friend like Miranda Priestly:

14

I did a Google Lens search of just the print area of the shirt, found part of the image they are showing on the shirt on Pinterest. I can’t read the artist signature, though.

15

Just for the heck of it, I did the same treatment for another shirt from the page. The octopus is copied from an image available lots of places, usually called “landscape blue octopus”. (Also “blue octopus 3”.) I’m sure that most if not all images shown on the clothes are ripped off from somewhere online.

16

Ooo, that’s a useful new wrinkle which improves my understanding of the context. Thanks.