Have you been to Dubai Mall? Of course, it depends which one you're referring to. Is it the shopping behemoth at the foot of the Burj Khalifa or, as The National reported yesterday, the more modest version in Southall, the traditional heartland of London's South Asian community, that offers the sincerest form a flattery to its Dubai namesake?
This emporium doesn’t offer dancing musical fountains, high-end brand stores or mammoth aquariums, but it does sell abayas from £20 (Dh119) and you can get your haircut for Dh30. In its choice of name, Southall’s Dubai Mall has added another chapter to a rich tradition of imitation, albeit one that is peppered with cease and desist letters from law firms seeking to protect the originals’ intellectual property.
Take the Hilton hotel. In a tiny former gold mining boomtown on New Zealand’s west coast, an establishment changed its name in the 1990s to the Blackball Hilton. A stern letter from Hilton Hotels’ lawyers followed, prompting the Kiwi version to call itself “Formerly the Blackball Hilton”. Its business boomed from the publicity it gained and the lawyers gave in.
The final temporary camp in Nepal before Everest Base Camp calls itself the Hillton, but no lawyer has yet dared to make the weeklong trek to deliver a cease and desist letter. Can we expect one to head to Southall?