From a distance, Justin Bieber seems like a pretty chill dude. He dresses as Cookie Monster on Halloween, overpays for monkey pictures, and wears Air Force 1s to the Met Gala. But when a chill dude loses his temper, the devil shivers — the devil in this case being fast-fashion giant H&M.
It all started in late December, when H&M launched a new collection of Bieber merch. In it, oversized T-shirts and phone cases were decorated with collaged images of Bieber that looked very Tiger Beat.
Other garments were printed with "I miss you more than life," a lyric from Bieber's single, "Ghost," and amusingly vague "WORLD TOUR" text, presumably referring to the Justice World Tour that Bieber recently canceled over health concerns.
The problem is that Bieber apparently didn't sign off on any of H&M's new merch. Well, as long as Justin doesn't see it, no one's the wiser.
Unfortunately for H&M, Bieber seems to keep tabs on fan pages who, in turn, keep tabs on everything.
On December 20, Bieber stan account @jbiebertraacker [sic] showcased the new H&M goods in a dedicated post, drawing ire from Bieber himself.
"When everyone finds out I didn’t approve any of this merch smh," he said, presumably to the immense delight of account's owner. I mean, isn't the point of every fan page to be noticed by your idol?
Anyways, Bieber then uploaded a pair of mostly all-caps Instagram Stories expressing immense displeasure for H&M.
"I DIDNT APROVE ANY OF THE MERCH COLLECTION THAT THEY PUT UP AT H&M," Bieber wrote, clearly not one to mince words. "The H&M MERCH THEY MADE OF ME IS TRASH AND I DIDNT APPROVE IT DONT BUY IT."
H&M initially defended the Bieber collection in a statement sent to WWD: “As with all other licensed products and partnerships, H&M followed proper approval procedures. As it stands now, we need to look into this more to understand, before we take any other actions.”
Licensing is indeed tricky territory: fashion brands big and small may go through a third party to acquire the license for a subject's visage, one that the subject may not be aware of themselves.
To whit, it's not impossible to believe that H&M went through the proper channels to procure rights for Bieber's image — from, say, the pop star's record label or the photographer who owns the photos H&M used — without Bieber being clued in, and it'd all be perfectly legal (obviously, from an outsider's perspective, we can't really say one way or another).
In the past, Bieber partnered with several fast-fashion companies for similar drops, releasing tour merch with retailers like H&M, Forever 21, and Claire's.
But old ties do not bind: fans flooded H&M's main Instagram account after Bieber published his Instagram Stories, asking H&M for "an explanation" and calling the collection "sketchy."
H&M's initial response to the accusations included affirmation that the collection would remain for sale.
By December 21, however, the Bieber collection had been removed from the H&M website "out of respect" to the singer, the company said in a subsequent statement.
