Sizing up the spat over red carpet copycats

Leading fashion designers lobby to copyright their work to curb the knockoff industry.

from the March 2, 2007 edition

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At issue: copyrighting fashion

While millions across America were watching the celebs strut their stuff on Sunday, production accountant Suzy Sherman was trolling the designer racks at Bloomingdale's at the Fashion Square Mall here. Asked whether or not she thinks the copyrighting bill should be passed, her response is unwavering. "Absolutely not," she says.

With a hearty laugh, Ms. Sherman waves a hand at the dozens of racks of dresses surrounding her. "If you had designers copyrighting everything they did, all this would go away for the average middle-class person like me because the originals would all be too expensive," she says, adding that the democratization of high fashion is good for everyone because it keeps the marketplace alive with fresh ideas. "Everybody builds on everybody else, that's how fashion has always grown and changed and made its way into mainstream America," she says. "That would all slow way down and maybe even stop if they could copyright everything."

Fashion outlaws

Copyright is not a magic bullet, points out University of Virginia's Christopher Sprigman, who studies the process of innovation.

"People don't understand that it would make unlawful anything that is substantially similar to a preceding thing," says the law professor, who testified against the CFDA-backed bill last July. "What copyright would do is blow up the entire fashion industry as we know it," he adds.

Nonetheless, far from being flattered by knockoff imitations, many top designers do a slow burn as they watch their months of effort replicated overnight, with others earning the profit.

"We are one of the only creative industries that has no protection," says New York designer Joanna Mastroianni, who has been clothing celebrities for red-carpet functions such as the Oscars for years.

"Would someone borrow software from Microsoft and say they were just doing it for inspiration, then tinker with it a little bit and then sell it as their own?" asks Ms. Mastroianni. She calls the threat of an industry collapse ridiculous, adding that imitation is the biggest problem she sees in her world. "We need to be encouraging originality, not rewarding imitation," she says.

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