When Matilda Djerf shoehorned her influence into her eponymous brand, Djerf Avenue, in 2019, its success was instant. In its first year, it made $1.8 million in revenue; last year, it hit just shy of $34.5 million.
On Instagram, where Djerf is followed by more than 3.1 million people, she posts pictures of the outfits that formed the basis of the inspiration for her brand. Her jackets are cream, her trousers are beige, her shirts are white and, in turn, so are Djerf Avenue’s. Djerf Avenue is the destination where the Stockholm native’s fans, which she affectionately calls her Djerf Angels, can go to to buy the exact pieces that their patron saint has not only conceived, but which she actually wears.
On TikTok, Djerf Avenue has just shy of 400,000 followers and, until last week, Djerf herself - on her personal account - had more than 2 million, but earlier this week, she deleted her account amid a flurry of videos from users criticising her for issuing small content creators with trademark warnings.
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Over the weekend, Djerf and her team reportedly began contacting the accounts of small content creators, many of whom have posted about Djerf Avenue dupes, before issuing them with trademark warnings. User Aliya Sumar posted a video, that’s been liked just shy of 90,000 times, on Sunday night, in which she explained that Djerf’s complaints extend to two previous videos she made. In the first, Sumar discusses a pair of Amazon pyjamas that appear to be similar to the Djerf Avenue Go Slow pair; in the second, Sumar dissects how to create a Matilda Djerf-inspired look using cheaper pieces from Amazon Fashion.
‘I’ve been a fan for a while, she’s even commented on stuff,’ Sumar said in her video. Sumar's criticism was quick to snowball, as other content creators began sharing the warnings they too had received.
In response to Sumar’s video, and other videos posted in a similar vein, Djerf Avenue issued a statement to both its TikTok and Instagram accounts, which read: ‘Unfortunately, there has been a recent surge in websites selling products with our design and owned prints/artworks.
'Our hand-drawn prints are copyrighted under the company Matildadjerf design AM.
'Any types of videos/content with our prints that are used on non Djerf Avenue items, such as “dupes”, will automatically be reported due to copyright infringement by our IP firm and is consistently removed by content platforms in accordance with their infringement policies.'
'In light of this, and to safeguard our prints and the individual print designers — we have we have an external intellectual property (IP) firm monitoring copyright infringements.’ Djerf also said that she is reaching out to creators and companies personally.
According to Djerf's so-called angels, the problem with the warnings Djerf is issuing lies in the fact that her pieces, the ones she has sold under her label, are not in and of themselves new creations. They argue that they are replicas of a Scandi minimalist aesthetic that not only predates Djerf's own ascent, but which she became a bastion of long before the inception of her brand, meaning the inspiration for Djerf Avenue designs came from, ahem, other brand's designs.
Users on TikTok have been quick to point to the blue LeApt shirt Djerf wore in June 2019, which is virtually inseparable, in likeness, to the Breezy Shirt Djerf Avenue then released in 2021. In 2021, Djerf wore a pair of silk cream trousers courtesy of Jacq Swim; in 2022, Djerf Avenue released a very similar pair, which it called its Dream Pants. A pair of khaki vintage trousers Djerf initially posted to her Instagram in 2019 were re-imagined in 2021 and released under Djerf’s label as its Go-To Pants in 2021.
‘Like, miss girl, your brand is literally dupes from your favourite clothes from other brands,’ one TikToker wrote.
While dupes are nothing new — the #Dupe has been viewed more than 5 billion times, the #Reps (short for replicas) has been viewed more than 2 billion times — the proliferation of influencer style on the internet has become a hotbed for them. Copyright infringements have occurred in the influencer realm before — WeWoreWhat’s Danielle Bernstein was first accused of copying smaller brands’ designs in 2018 (she has repeatedly denied the claims) —, but for a brand whose DNA is built on the backs of other label's designs, the criticism from Djerf Avenue of influencers' dupe videos is loud.
Djerf Avenue is an amalgam of Djerf's own influences and interests, which are in and of themselves informed by the result of other people's influences and interests and so on and so forth. While nobody is suggesting that Djerf is a plagiarist, the fact of the matter is that everything in fashion, as in life, is informed by that which has gone before and the line between being 'influenced by' and something being a duplicate is unclear.
The question at the heart of the Djerf Avenue drama is really how far somebody can go in biting the hand that has fed and continues to feed them. As the philospher Friedrich Nietzsche once so aptly said: ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.' And sadly, that’s never been quite so apparent.
Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
