In February 1965, Riley was being driven from the airport to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Travelling up Madison Avenue she saw in the shop windows row upon row of dresses with designs lifted from her paintings. Riley denounced the way her art was being “vulgarized in the rag trade” and publicly expressed her ‘deep anger’ at the commercialisation of one of her paintings by a New York dress firm. The firm was producing dresses with a design based on one of her paintings which was owned by the director of the firm. She tried to sue for copyright infringement but was unsuccessful.