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| FAMILIAR LOOK Copies of royal wedding attire by ABS by Allen Schwartz. |
On Wednesday, ABS by Allen Schwartz began selling a series of royal-wedding-inspired dresses that includes a fairly good copy of the Alexander McQueen gown worn by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, for $1,100. That same night, Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, reintroduced legislation seeking to grant copyright protection to designers, presumably discouraging exactly that kind of knockoff fashion.
Now five years into a campaign by the Council of Fashion Designers of America to enact some sort of protection for original designs, the proponents of such legislation say they have their best chance yet at seeing a bill become law.
One of the biggest differences in the new bill is that designers would have to prove that a copy is “substantially identical” to their originals, rather than “substantially similar.” In fact, it is difficult to imagine what exactly would be protected, though Mr. Kolb said that Kate Middleton’s wedding dress would probably be a good example, or anything you might see at the current Costume Institute exhibition of Alexander McQueen. But passage of the bill would be a symbolic victory for designers, especially those who have suffered financially by the widespread copying of their work.
Mr. Schwartz doesn’t think so. Pretty much anything that is created in fashion, he argued, is the result of what is in the air, so if two people are doing the same thing, it means they are both on trend. With his red-carpet-inspired dresses, he usually makes enough small changes that it would be hard to call them identical to the original, even when they look alike. “It’s hard to prove because it’s not the truth,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Can you imagine? These people would go around saying they made the first asymmetrical dress. It’s egocentric and it’ll never fly.”
click here to read more This has been an on going discussion between Leslie and I. Coming from a designers prescriptive, Leslie agrees with Mr. Schwartz that it will be extremely hard to prove how a piece of clothing has been copied and who can truly say they made something first. Before reading and talking with Leslie, I was on the CFDA's side. I still believe that there should be some rule/law that designers should follow but in a realistic manner that will prevent an unnecessary uprising. All in all Leslie and I are interested how this will play out in the years to come.
WILSON, E. (2011, July 15). Designers Revisit Copyright Protection - NYTimes.com. Fashion - Fashion Week - On the Runway Blog - NYTimes.com. Retrieved July 17, 2011, from http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/designers-revisit-copyright-protection/?ref=fashion
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