Brooklyn designer suing Yoko Ono, but sexy concept dates to Barbra Streisand
‘It came from burlesque’
A Brooklyn fashion designer is suing Yoko Ono for $10 million, claiming she ripped off her sexy clothing line featuring flimsy fabrics, cutouts and “hands” positioned over strategic body parts – a look made famous in 1970 by Barbra Streisand in the smash film “The Owl and the Pussycat.”
Haleh Nematzadeh, owner of Smashing Starlets LLC is suing Ono, John Lennon’s widow, and Ono’s design partner Opening Ceremony. “This case is about…Yoko Ono and multimillion-dollar fashion company who together stole the designs of an up and coming designer and pawned them off as their own,” the suit states, according to Courthouse News.
Nematzadeh claims that after she showed the sketches and pictures of her collection to Ono’s design team, “they canceled the photo shoot,” and recycled her ideas as a collection for men.