Fashion and Intellectual Property

 While Post-modernism has most certainly made its mark, the creative industries, particularly the fashion industry, are profoundly modernist. Constantly searching for the new, the individual and the unique, fashion designers often go to extremes only to have the fruits of their labour imitated by fast-fashion chains within moments. While some may say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it an also be highly annoying. Imagine putting your heart, soul (and money, blood, sweat and tears) into a work, only to see it being copied and sold on the streetside below. Not nice. But as fashion designers, we'll all willingly and sometimes thoughtlessly or subconciously 'draw inspiration' from the works of other designers, often many at once, and piece these little bits of inspiration  - in the form of a sleeve, a collar, a cuff - together to create something with which we can express ourselves. We create and ride along with trends, waves of communal thought in which many designers share ideas.. "It's not copying, it's the zeitgeist" we say. 'Exaggerated collars are so very NOW!' We often come up with our own versions and see them copied, wish, we could do something about it, but fail to consider that a collar is purely something that goes around your neck  - and that there aren't that many ways to design one (Well you tell me, but I don't think there is) - so there isn't much space for variation anyway. This is why Intellectual Copyright is not prevalent in the fashion Industry, but it may be a good thing...




Here's what Johanna Blakely, Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center,  had to say. 


Johanna Blakely; Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture.