Serendipity in Fashion Design
It is not copying; it is creating similar ideas, even over distances of time
You can see the similarity (serendipity) in these ball coats. My 1968 ball coat was inspired by the man who went around the moon that year. The other two came much later, so, of course I did not copy them, and being brand designers, they did not copy me.
I wish I had known about serendipity when I presented, “A Position Against Copyright Law in Fashion Design” in 2009 for the “New York State Bar Association. I learned and used it recently in “ChannSpirations and Coincidences”, a publication on Medium.com.
I wrote in the NYSBA magazine: “A copyright law in fashion design would smash young design entrepreneurs’ hopes because every idea (the look) would have to be tested against all existing ideas. Design (in fashion or in any industry) must not be separated from its technical design, execution and manufacturing. Young designers are the future of America and its free enterprise system. Let us not force every young designer to be controlled by big brands or by a government that only works for big business and no longer understands innovation and entrepreneurship .”
This misconception of creativity being unique is taught in most fashion education. When part of leading a seminar at the Boston School of Fashion Design in the 1980s, a tearful young designer asked: “What do I do about [brand designer] that copied my design?” I replied, “It was not copying. You should be proud that you thought like her.” Today I would call it serendipitous.
Here are six more serendipitous creations:
Both my Cape Sleeve dress and my Sunburst dress are now in the MassArt Fashion Design Museum, and pictured in their 2022 Fashion Design Catalog. The White Leather Zigzag (below) was featured on the 2022 Catalog cover, to emphasize my “Pattern Engineering”. #5 White Mink Helmet, and #6 Lattice Vest are also in the MassArt museum and in the Catalog.
Looking further into serendipity
Mike Kraus, “ART”, Medium.com, speaks of serendipity, without using the word: “Knowing beauty is to see that originality is a myth. Imagination is the combining of ideas, influences, and collaboration leading to new ideas. And artists should acknowledge those motivations. Being the first to do something isn’t “original;” being different and better is.”
In April, 2022, I wrote: “Time Merges, Moving from Fifth to the Sixth Dimension, Then, now and next are linked by samenesses”. I wished I had used Serendipity, rather than samenesses. I wrote: “When briefly experiencing the sixth dimension… I am looking at the whole and want to understand it. The 5D perspectives of 3D events and 4D motion and time, begin merging into a wholistic 6D vision. My thoughts link by samenesses, whether past or present events or future ideas…. I was born into (chose) a family with a great ability to visualize structural concepts in the mind to build new possibilities. …that ability … is an attribute of the Sixth Dimension. I created some principles for students and proteges to do this inner visualization. … and we do experience this in the Afterlife. … Connecting by samenesses has been with me most of my life. [But, expressing it outwardly] I was called mentally ill.”
I thank Marcus aka Gregory Maidman for introducing me to ChannSpirations and Coincidences and learning about Serendipity, a better word for other words that do not tell it as it is.
