Did Gucci Steal a Black Celebrity Stylist’s Design for their Handbag This Season?

The name Sonique Saturday may not ring a bell at first, but trust me when i say you’ve seen her work before. Saturday, a celebrity stylist, is the conceptualist behind the now-famous ‘You Fake Like This Birkin’ bag that comes under her BellaDonna collection. Over the years, the humorous bags have garnered the attention of celebrities, who have rocked the bags as satirical commentary to the idea of designer purses.

Although she was spotted sporting her bag during NYFW a few seasons back, it would be her client, Amber Rose, that would bring the bag to notoriety and make it a huge trend to the conversation of  controversial fashion statements.The main goal of Saturday’s message is to encourage others not to find self-worth through materialism. Therefore, it is understandable that she has recently taken to Instagram to rant her rage over Gucci’s new Fall 2016 handbag, which strangely markets a bag with a similar design aesthetic:
After seeing what Gucci, whose highly sought-after collection showed on Wednesday, Saturday and her fans took to social media to highlight the interesting similarities between her own work and that on a black tote bag from look 19 of the show: the word ‘real’ spray painted over the official Gucci logo. In an Instagram post, that has since been deleted, the stylist noted “too bad I’m not getting that check for @Gucci stealing my creation” expressing that she was proud to see her work on the runway but unhappy with the lack of acknowledgement that it was her bag that drove the inspiration.
However, let the record also show that this year’s collection was in collaboration with artist and musician Trevor Andrew, who has many images of his hand-painted designs in a similar spray-paint effect as those that walked the catwalk on his Instagram.
In an interview with WWD about the underground artist who would be collaborating on the collection, Gucci creative director Allesandro Michele did say he was a fan of the artist’s work, despite his particular usage of the brand logo. “I saw the way Trevor was using the symbol of the company and I thought it was quite genius,” Michele said, “It’s completely different than the idea of copying. It’s the idea that you try to [take to] the street, through language like graffiti, the symbols of the company.”
Although i can’t argue either to or for the appropriation of Saturday’s ideas, Michele’s explanation of Trevor’s inspiration could explain where the idea for the bag came from. However, perhaps the question is where did Trevor receive his inspiration…
This is definitely an open-ended debate. What do you guys think? Did Gucci steal Saturday’s designs? Are all designs free to the world unless copyrighted, or was this an instance of similar ideas that happen to resemble each other?