Urban Outfitters at it again, ripping off Thrasher Magazine this time…
July 9th, 2009 by ThrasherMag
As if you needed another reason to hate Urban Outfitters, they just blatanly ripped off our classic Thrasher magazine design. See for yourself and judge who’s the innovator and who’s the imitator:
Thrasher 1989 vs Urban Outfitters 2009
The “Boyfriend” is an iconic shirt we’ve been selling here at Thrasher magazine for just over twenty years now. Originally created in 1989, the “Oh God! Why can’t my boyfriend skate?!” t-shirt is one of the few designs that has never been discontinued. I know Urban Outfitters is notorious for ripping off t-shirt designs, but damn this sucks.
(143 votes, average: 4.08 out of 5)
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The urban outfitters version is horrendously crap, the blondes tissue looks like a tube of toothpaste plus her forehead is way out of proportion. I wish my illustrator could draw!
Roy Lichtenstein – Innovator
Everyone else – Imitator
Lame. Clearly “inspired” by the original.
The original is obviously a reference to Lichtenstein, dude. That doesn’t invalidate the design, or the rip.
yeah, I wondered if it was OK to be bummed about someone ripping off something that was a rip-off/reference originally… Over the years we’ve seen a bunch of clever variations and never got bummed, but the Urban Outfitters thing just sucks… BTW, Anyone know if our OG Thrasher design art is a direct Lichtenstein bite/borrow or just done in the style of? Jeff Klindt was the artist who did the “boyfriend” design for Thrasher back in the day, but he passed away a few years back so we can’t ask him…
to my knowledge (of lichtenstein) i don’t think he ever did a painting with that shot, view whatever you want to call it, plus i only ever remeber blond girls in his paintings when i went to his show in london
i’d say yours is just a homage/reference to pop art in general
@r u serious Funny remark, as if Lichtenstein made the designs for his paintings himself! lol
ONCE AGAIN ANOTHER REASON NOT TO BUY CLOTHES THERE ONLY THE KIDROBOT STUFF
http://www.reloadbags.com/store/bags-by-size/deluxe-courier/limited-edition/neil-blender.html
speaking of rip offs. check out these bags ripping off neil blender. all that’s missing is neil’s name and the g&s logo. kooks! hey are over $300! DON’T BUY THESE!!!!
Wow…sucks!
Maybe you/we should all go and leave reviews of the shirt and mention the blatant ‘borrowing’ of the design. It would be a good experiment to see if Urban Outfitters would let those type of posts stay up on their site.
But Urban was ripping of a Frank Frazetta 50’s love comic here so they were the original rip-off artists here.
Really, doesn’t Urban rip-off everything? Both are bad renditions of Lichtenstein.
Is DJ Premier involved in this bag with his name and portrait?
http://www.reloadbags.com/store/limited-edition/see-all/dj-premier.html
urban outfitters ripped off the sentiment and look of the classic thrasher design. thrasher didnt rip off lichtenstein, who merely blew up and rearranged (for the worse) existing comic book panels, they took a comic book panel themselves and made it funny/ironic and skate specific and something NEW. thats whats important.
yo don’t they sell thrasher tees at urban outfitters don’t be a sell out thrasher.
Okay, first of all, I own that original Thrasher shirt (it is a straight-up CLASSIC, right up there with “Prevent This Tragedy”). I bought it new 17 years ago and now the fabric is like lace, it got washed and bleached so many times. I treasure it so much I stopped wearing it years ago and literally had it framed. Because those truly were the good old days. So this… is not cool.
Second, this thing is an aesthetic abomination. What’s going on with that “artwork”? The blonde looks like she has a wicked headache, not like she’s in despair. And they completely failed to capture the look of pop-art (for example, that hair is way overworked). Major fail. Which is quite a trick when you’re COPYING something great.
hate to tell yo this but the Thrasher shirt is a rip-oof of a Frank Frazetta romance comic from the 1950s
the girl is on the bottom right panel
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PB-O1yT5EYg/SZOGFnS5QAI/AAAAAAAAegs/Jo6ldBNeesk/s1600-h/toolateforlove_07_fritz.jpg
the guy bears a strong resemblance to Frazetta