From now on, when somebody shows you a picture of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana walking around in New York's Bronx in 1997 and asks you who is wearing trademarked clothes, you'd better bet on the former.
It was just revealed that the white sari with a triple blue-border symbolising Poverty, Obedience and the vows of Chastity and of Wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor, was recently copyrighted.
Canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by the Vatican in 2016, Mother Teresa wore the garment throughout her life.
Applications were filed before the Trade Marks Registry on December 12, 2013, but, in 2003, the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's order, were already seeking legal protection for the name of their founder and the name of the order and the order's logo.
The Trade Marks Registry, Government of India, eventually granted the registration for the sari design in September 2016, on the very day the Mother was canonised, but the news were publicised only now to raise awareness after a few infringement cases.
Born in 1910 at Skopje in Macedonia in a Catholic family, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu went to India in 1929 as Sister Mary Teresa.
After a period in Darjeeling she moved to Kolkata and was assigned as a teacher at Saint Mary's High School for Girls before she was given consent by her convent in 1948 to work for the poor. Teresa purchased from a Kolkata market the sari on the evening she was granted permission to start working in the city's slums, picking the blue-striped fabric as the colour blue is usually associated with the Virgin Mary.
As the decades passed, the blue-bordered sari became a sign of the identity of the nuns of the Missionaries of Charity. The saris are woven and stitched by leprosy patients at the Missionaries of Charity-run Gandhiji Prem Niwas at Titagarh in North 24 Parganas district and sent to the Missionaries of Charity's headquarters in Kolkata from where they are supplied to the sisters across the world.
Granting the order to use the pattern is a unique decision: this is indeed the first time that a uniform has been protected under the Intellectual Property rights.
Besides, this is also the first time the stripes reappear in the official attire of a religious order.
Stripes caused indeed more than one problem to the Carmelites who used to wear a mantle with seven bars, four white and three black.
The motif represented the scorches left on the mantle of Elijah as he ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire.
The cause of derision in Europe (Michel Pastoureau explains in the volume The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric that they were called,''les frères barrés,'' or barred brothers, and that in old French, this term hinted at the marks of illegitimacy), the striped mantle was exchanged for a white one (a symbol for the Virgin Mary's purity) in 1287.
In 1295 Pope Boniface VIII issued a bill banning striped clothing from all religious orders.
Apparently the nuns were skeptical about protecting the sari, but the late Sister Nirmala Joshi, who succeeded Mother Teresa as head of the Missionaries of Charity, stated a while back in a Notification, "As an image of Mother Teresa, the 'blue par' (blue bordered) sari, which was worn by Mother Teresa and is part of the religious dress of her Sisters, is so characteristic of Mother Teresa as to be an internationally recognized symbol of her. In fact, this type of sari is no longer sold in the public market in Calcutta because it is associated with Mother Teresa's religious dress (...) the blue par sari has become a 'trademark' of Mother Teresa and thus of her religious congregation. Its use is also the sole right of the Missionaries of Charity."
A lawyer for the order, Biswajit Sarkar, stated the choice was made to protect the reputation: there have been indeed organisations starting schools naming themselves after Mother Teresa, and wearing the order's uniform, and a cooperative bank being established in the nun's name, not to mention religious books with the blue-striped design.
Intellectual Property attorney Sarkar said legal action will now be taken against unauthorised use of design to combat "misuse" of reputation. His next goal is to copyright Teresa's name and the distinctive uniform of her order in other countries.
But his job may become rather difficult as they will first have to remove all sorts of imitations including children's versions of Mother Teresa's sari and mobile phone covers featuring images of her in the iconic sari available on Amazon's India store, before moving onto other online global retailers à la Aliexpress where they will find more items with Mother Teresa's quotes and portraits.
After her death Mother Teresa was criticised for the sub-standard conditions in which the sick and dying were treated in her medical facilities, and for her questionable political contacts, management of the sums of money she received, and her views on abortion, contraception and divorce.
Commentators may find more reasons to criticise her if they consider the fact that Mother Teresa herself may have appropriated the design of the sari: women who swept the streets used indeed to wear a similar sari around the time when she bought the fabric. Her original intention was indeed to adopt a religious dress that was suitable to the local climate, but also had a symbolic religious meaning for its colours and at the same time allowed her to identify herself with the poor.
Besides, critics may continue, Sister Nirmala's Notification stating that "the blue par sari has become a 'trademark' of Mother Teresa" may also sound like a way to market her (should the religious attire of an order be indeed protected by Intellectual Property rights?), something that would contrast with the symbolical meaning of one of the three stripes - poverty.
Yet, there seems to be a lesson in this story for fashion designers: if a religious order registers a pattern for their uniforms, they may as well try to fight and protect their works in the same way (especially if they are genuinely original and innovative...). As for Dolce & Gabbana and all the other designers who appropriate religious symbols, they will have to take note: while they may be able to keep on stealing images of religious icons, they'd better be very careful when it comes to religious orders...
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