Fashion Pirates On The Loose
How Knock-Offs affect the Industry
The fashion industry is a billion dollar industry involving not only just designers but fabric manufacturers, pattern-makers, the people who make the paper for the patterns, models, tailors, seamstresses, the list goes on; piracy of a design affects and threatens the livelihood of everyone employed to the fashion industry. Designers are supposed to work hard to bring original themes and designs to the consumer so that innovation of fashion may thrive, and so the industry stays relevant, fashion pirates operate for the benefit of money and threaten the balance between business and innovation and without innovation the industry would become dull and lose relevancy to consumers. Fashion piracy has negatively impacted the Fashion Industry in North America, denying workers of what they should have earned.
“I don’t design clothes. I design dreams.” — Ralph Lauren
If we look at the text, “KNOCK IT OFF, FOREVER 21!”, The author Irene Tan sheds light on the issue of fashion piracy, first off why it is even a problem and specifically how efforts have been taken in America to try and place laws to minimize the effects of fashion piracy but have ultimately failed. Fashion piracy’s effect on the fashion industry not only effects the integrity of a design but threatens the livelihood of people employed to the fashion industry. Tan then goes to explain the type of protection fashion designers have already in place, called trade dress infringement. The trade dress lawsuit refers to the general appearance of a consumer product such as labeling, packaging, specific things that tie meaning to a brand. Examples of trade dress include the McDonald’s “M” or Louis Vuitton’s “LV”, the author explains why this law is not enough to protect designers because of the technicalities of the law. In order to copyright a fashion design, the design must be specifically tying it to the fashion designer, in expanded terms the consumers decide if the design is what the designer is known for, this is noted as “secondary meaning”.
In most cases these type of appeals fail in the court because it heavily relies on the consumers perspective; Tan’s solution to fashion piracy is to “adopt the Design Piracy Prohibition Act (DPPA)” Which is a lawsuit described in her own words “proposes extending copyright protection to fashion designs.” This DPPA law, if it should be passed would effectively negate the effects of fashion piracy on the industry allowing designer’s to freely create without having to worry about someone else “knocking off” their design.
Tan effectively uses logical appeal to inform and persuade the reader of her stance on the issue of fashion piracy. It is most evident in the quote “Trade dress is a difficult argument to make in the fashion context because designers must prove secondary meaning.” I agree with the authors solution towards the issue, because I believe the trade dress law relies too much on technicalities like consumer views and a judge’s perspective on whether a designer’s design should be protected from knock offs. The author’s solution, the DPPA if passed would absolve most cases of knock offs and directly impact the counterfeit goods industry so that such activity would be discouraged.
Fashion designers do not apply for patents because it the process is time consuming and by the time a piece is patented the season has already ended. People may also wonder why does the designer not apply for it 3 months prior to releasing the item, the answer is in the restrictions of the patent law only allowing designs to be patented once it is made public, overall an in-effective way to protect ones hard work.
“For example, designer Narcisco Rodriguez testified before Congress that one of his gowns sold approximately 7 to 8 million copies; however, only 40 of the gowns sold were originals.”- Irene Tan
Narcisco Rodriguez is an example the author uses to back up her remarks on why the court is unable to help designers when their designs are being stolen, the designer also did not profit off the 7 million copies sold which effected his next season’s collections output conclusively.
Overall the system in place right now is in-effective and insufficient in protecting designer’s idea’s and hard work from pirates, ultimately affecting the fashion community and the workers of the industry, many people do not realize the severity of what knock off’s are doing to certain brand labels, the consequences forces budget cuts and in some cases designers are fired for unsuccessful work even though their design was successful, except someone else ended up profiting off the design.
