Intellectual Property and… Victoria’s Secret!? #
In the category of “news so weird there seems to be a moral obligation to convey it,” Victoria’s Secret is accused of having stolen the design for a bra from a Long Island paralegal, Katerina Plew.
“The first time I thought of it I was getting ready for a christening,” Ms. Plew said in a telephone interview from her home in Selden, N.Y. “It was an idea that just popped into my head in — don’t know — like March of ’99.”
The bra, with its various hooks and eyelets, is something like the Micronaut of the undergarment world. By a complicated set of maneuvers, it can be worn in as many as 100 different ways.
Which, of course, made it a highly prized commodity to underwear purveyors. In 2006, Ms. Plew said she had arranged to meet with designers from Victoria’s Secret. But without warning and on the very day it was set to have occurred, the designers canceled her appointment, she contends.