We see it every Fall and Spring during Fashion Week, designers dictate what everyone will be wearing the following season by what they display in their runway collections. If they deem a particular trend to be in style, then we are guaranteed to see it in one form or another throughout each collection. While that style trend is prominent, each designer does their own take on it and lends their own spice of creativity to the mix.
While many brands have some designs patented, such as Levi Strauss’s pocket embroidery, which almost serves as a trademark of the brand, the fuel behind Intellectual Property Law is lost on most of the fashion industry as their “creative ideas” are not copyright protected. This is according to an article I read in the International Herald Tribune today which discusses why the fashion industry flourishes on copying each other’s ideas.
According to the article, fashion designers promote the latest trend sending us all running to be the first among our friends to be wearing that trapeze dress or grabbing that silver handbag off the rack. Once we become a sea of silver handbag, wedge shoe wearing, statement ring flashing individuals in baby dolls with leggings, we are immediately bored and begin looking for something new and interesting to wear. Thus begins the cycle of designers churning out the next trend for us to gush over all due to the expansion of creativity that isn’t confined due to copyright of anyone’s design idea.
Put into this perspective it’s almost amusing to look back on my fashion behavior, yet something I would absolutely not want to be without. Season after season I love watching the shows during Fashion Week and watching each trend emerge and how wonderfully creative each designer is with it. I openly admit to being one of “those people” who run to the store to pick up the latest trend-wear of the season. Isn’t that what makes fashion fun after all?