This week I had a very interesting tweet from a man who sent me a photo of his new Stagey tote bag that he had bought from DressCircle.co.uk. Normally this would be a lovely message to receive but the problem is it wasn’t an official WestEndWilma.com product and had seemingly been replicated and sold.
If you look carefully at the two images you can see the westendwilma.com logo is in a much higher up position on the replica bag on the right and has the words ‘Twitter, Facebook, Instagram’ underneath. Official West End Wilma Stagey bags have never been printed with these words on the design.
Interestingly, when I was originally designing the bag, I did play around with options and using the words ‘Twitter, Facebook, Instagram’ was at one point considered. However, never was this design printed. The only time I have ever shared this draft design with anyone was when I had accidentally emailed an image of a mock-up to Dress Circle thinking it was the correct design. I find it strange that this design has now found its way onto a printed tote bag and sent to a customer.
I contacted Dress Circle to understand what has happened and they said they “have no idea where the bag came from”. Dress Circle went on to confirm that the bags have been taken down from their website and apologised for the error.
I am not sure where these bags have come from but I wanted to make a clear that if you see these for sale anywhere please do not buy one as they are unofficial and lower quality than they should be.
West End Wilma