Introduction
In design circles, it is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of fashion but I feel that emulating someone else’s design amounts to infringement of intellectual property rights. However copyright and trademark laws especially in United States of America have failed to protect the intellectual property rights of designers and that is why imitation has become an integral part of fashion in the country. Imitation as a form of fashion is not as sincere as many think because it has filled the market with knock off fashion accessories like handbags, shoes and clothes in attempt to help consumers get less expensive version of a product.
Reaction
The city of New York has introduced a legislation aimed at re-writing copyright laws to protect new York designers from imitators but many people feel that this legislation will do more harm than good to the fashion industry because it will remove fashionable products from the market and raise consumer prices. Just like musicians, book publishers film makers and software engineers whose intellectual properties are protected against piracy and plagiarism. Why are fashion designers not protected by copyright regulations exposing them to the vagaries of knock offs? Some people claim that unlike music, film and publishing industries which are highly threatened by piracy, imitation of designs has never posed a serious threat to the design industry. Most critics claim that imitation has actually led to the growth of the industry but they fail to realize that creative designers need to enjoy maximum fruits of their labor. The designers are denied maximum sales by the existence of knock off products which imitate their designs and they retail at a lower price than the original designer products. The freedom to copy that exists in the modern design environment may be responsible for creation of trends which sell fashion but the freedom infringes on the intellectual rights of the designers which in the first place should be protected by the law. This is why I support the move by the New York authorities to create a legislation to protect New York designers from design imitators who end up making more money than the owners of the concepts. Copyrighting fashion will in fact lead to the growth of the industry because everyone will be busy creating new designs instead of waiting for a few people to create then the rest copy. The law should not only cover unique designs as it has been proposed; it should cover all forms of designs.
Conclusion
Though American fashion industry has enjoyed steady growth since the second war despite numerous moments of economic recession, I believe that copyrighting fashion will not have adverse effects on the growth of this industry because it will encourage designers to go outside the box and create unique designs and this will minimize the number of imitators in the market. Copyrighting fashion will allow creative to enjoy the fruits of their creativity because in the current scenario that has the freedom to copy, imitators tend to earn more than the original designers because they sell large volumes of imitations at lower prices. Imitation to me is not the most sincere form of fashion; it is the wicked form of fashion and should be discouraged through enactment of legislations that protect the intellectual property rights of designers.