Billie Eilish Nozomi Merchandise Scandal

Overview

Billie Eilish Nozomi Merchandise Scandal refers to singer-songwriter Billie Eilish's merchandise sold by the brand Siberia Hills briefly in August 2019. The Billie Eilish hoodie sold on the Siberia Hills site featured stolen anime fan art of Love Live! character Nozomi Tojo by Makoto Kurokawa. Following Twitter outrage, Siberia Hills issued an apology and the merchandise was discontinued.

Background

On August 15th, Artist Makoto Kurokawa posted their fan art of Love Live! character Nozomi Tojo to Twitter^[1] (shown below, left). The post gained over 14,700 likes and 4,100 retweets in a year. A year later, on August 8th, 2019, Twitter user @nestuur^[2] posted screenshots of the Siberia Hills brand Billie Eilish Merch noting the similarity to Kurokawa's art and saying, "Billie Eilish is selling stolen Nozomi art in her merch what the fuck" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 58,800 likes and 25,000 retweets in four days.

Notable Developments

On August 8th, 2019, Various Twitter users discussed the merchandise and the brand Siberian Hills. Twitter user @MkUltraVonRa^[4] tweeted, "I would place the blame on Siberia Hills. The clothing company has other shirts for sale on their site with anime graphics (probably stolen as well)" and @weplar responded saying that "they are both to blame" (shown below, left). The tweet gained upward of 1,000 likes in four days. The next day, Siberia Hills posted an apology to their Instagram^[3] account admitting their mistake and claiming that Billie Eilish was not involved in the decision to use stolen art (shown below, right). The post gained over 29,900 likes in three days. The merchandise has since been taken down from their site.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References