Anyone else heard about this?
According to the CFDA:
Proposed law to destroy 90% of design businesses
Fashion copyright: the death of us all
According to the CFDA:
The following excerpts are from fashion-incubator.com. The full posts, if you want to read more, are here:Design Piracy describes the increasingly prevalent practice of enterprises that seek to profit from the invention of others by producing copies of original designs under a different label. These duplicate versions then have the potential to flood the market and devalue the original by their ubiquity, poor quality, or speed at which they reach the consumer. Technological advances to the means of textile and garment production, as well as increases in the number of distribution channels and the availability of cheap labor in emerging economies have created serious challenges to the growth of fashion design in America.
The Design Piracy Prohibition Act grew from these concerns, and was initiated with two main objectives: to protect both the established and the up-and-coming designers whose development, growth and success helps to support the $350 billion U.S. fashion industry; and to preserve intellectual property.
Proposed law to destroy 90% of design businesses
Fashion copyright: the death of us all
Effects on consumers:You know what’s weird? I don’t understand why it is that in an era of reduced innovation, that there’s an increasing obsession with IP. What for? Everything looks the same. Traditionally, you prevented knock offs through engineering innovation and quality. Garments with tricky details are hard to copy, too expensive. It’s hard to pattern them and sew them. It’s not worth the effort for such a specialized market of unknown demand. There’s designers like Julian. Nobody knocks him off. And he posts the patterns to his garments on the internet! He’ll even teach you how to copy him -free! Talk about open source. Yet nobody does it. Nobody copies the true innovators. It’s too expensive, the market is dicey. Designers like Julian will be out or continue to design as a formal protest (knowing him), risking lawsuits. In the olden days, you protected yourself through innovation. People are copied owing to inferior product quality or an ageing concept, not the opposite. It was a good idea but poorly executed. Remember when I wrote about Beth Mitchell and everyone jumped to her defense after it appeared Michael Kors copied her, improving the product? In the end, we discovered she copied Bobbie Breslau and even used a copyrighted home sewing pattern to do it! And that reminds me of something else. Young designers -the so called innovators this legislation proposes to protect- are more likely to copy their predecessors than to have their own designs usurped. It is rarely the big bad pirate manufacturer copying a start up but the opposite. Throughout history, the concept of “copy till you catch up” has served as a nurturing, exploratory stage of a designer’s career. You’re too young to have matured as an artist. How can you find your own vibe unless you’ve experimented with examples developed by the masters? This legislation would subvert the growth and development of young talent, not protect it.
What will the retail landscape look like? I can only imagine retail clothing stores will be a tenth of their former size. As a consumer yourself, what range of clothing choices and colors will you have? And dare I mention fit? As it is, shopping for fit entails endless travails and misery. If this legislation passes, you’re sunk. If it’s hard to find clothes that fit you now, in colors and styles that flatter you, how can you possibly expect that with dramatically diminished competition in the market you’ll find it in the future? Do you think you’ll be able to lobby registered manufacturers to make clothing you like? Ha! So much for protecting innovation from new blood. I can only imagine most of us will retire. It’s too much of a hassle as it is. It’s not worth the added “investment” to bring a design to market. The barrier of costs this legislation represents will stifle innovation more effectively than any other possible alternative. We won’t have to worry about protecting innovation if there isn’t any.
Not only is apparel fit impacting consumers but clothes are about to get much more expensive. Because of the costs -which includes longer lead times owing to legal requirements- I sincerely doubt anything will be manufactured domestically; it’ll be all off shore. And then imagine the supply problems. What if the manufacturer who’s registered the common “hoodie” loses their goods due to an act of God or misses a deadline? If you want a work out jacket, you’d better hit the thrift store. One side effect will be that used clothing prices will dramatically increase. One possible outcome is that people will start sewing more of their own clothes since one-offs, not for hire, wouldn’t be affected but forget about sewing up that cute outfit for a neighbor. You could get sued. Maybe lose your house. I guess you could describe one positive outcome being that fewer used garments (or new ones) will be headed for the landfill. Is it worth the trade off? Rather than benefiting consumers, this will create an apparel monopoly for the select few who have the wherewithal to be first in line at the copyright office. In this era of “brands” and The End of Fashion(Agins) coupled with the disproportionate growth of trademarking and marketing, many apparel “manufacturers” aren’t manufacturers at all. They’re BRANDS, with a compendium of products that reflect their image in the marketplace. You can breathe easier knowing the world will become a much safer place for homogenized offerings from brands because no one else will have the resources to manufacture.![]()
Contrary to popular belief, small businesses employ more workers than large ones and in spite of the hits apparel has taken in recent years, did you know there are still more people employed in apparel and textile manufacturing than in any other kind of manufacturing? Overnight, at least 90% of those jobs will be gone. Textile suppliers? Gone. Sales reps? Gone. Retail employees? Gone. Sewing machine manufacturers? Gone. Suppliers? Gone. Software companies? Gone. Fashion magazines? Gone. PR companies? Gone. Who will need them? It’ll be a protected market a monopolist can only dream of. This legislation will be beyond compare in its devastation and reach. It will serve to centralize the whole fashion strata into one tiny segment. One benefit, fashion bloggers with their pink pony blogs will have to get a life. Home sewers aren’t off the hook. Your fabrics feed from us. I hope you like muslin. Pocket twill can be a fun fabric too. Better stock up now.