We’ve all been there. You see a designer piece you love – with a
price tag you hate. Then you happen to spy a very convincing high-street impression (we’re being diplomatic here). You snap it up.
You wear it. You get complimented on how ‘it looks just like Céline/Prada/Saint Laurent/whoever’. You probably think there’s nothing wrong with that. But there is – plenty. We get it, convincing imitations are tempting, but so are lots of things that aren’t good for you.
The ethics of knock-off culture are at the forefront of fashion’s mind at the moment. In a week where luxury goods group Kering dropped a lawsuit against Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba after the latter agreed to cooperate with the fight against counterfeiting,
Gucci filed a lawsuit against Forever 21 for allegedly ripping off its ‘famous and iconic bluered- blue and green-red-green stripe webbing trademarks’. The Gucci filing included a motion to dismiss Forever 21’s earlier complaint against a threat of trademark litigation from Gucci and counterclaims of its own for ‘trademark
infringement, trademark dilution and unfair competition’. Designer handbags at dawn.
A fashion behemoth, you might be inclined to think that Gucci is a company that doesn’t need our sympathy and support. However, cases such as this have an important implication for the wider industry – and young designers in particular. Setting up and running a label is an expensive endeavour. Fledgling brands can be seriously, even fatally wounded by cheaper copies of their wares flooding
the high street. We should all care about that – new talent is the lifeblood of the fashion industry at every price point, after all.
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The ecosystem of the fashion industry means, of course, that everyone is feeding off one another in some way – but there is a crucial difference between being inspired by something and definitively trying to copy it. Love Gucci’s eclecticism but don’t have the
budget? There are numerous ways to channel that without resorting to watered-down knockoffs of their collections: clash your prints! Shop
vintage! Try pearls with a turban and glasses!
One of the most compelling arguments in favour of knock-offs tends to be that fashion should be open to all. Why shouldn’t the girl
who has £20 to spend on a top have access to the same heart-flutteringly gorgeous fashions that the woman who has £2,000 to drop on a dress does? The answer is, of course, she should. But the key to swoon-worthy pieces is creativity, not lazy copying.
The high street is at its finest when it is nurturing new design talent and bringing a fresh perspective to a crowded market rather
than watering down other people’s visions and churning out cheap copies. Surely we deserve better than that. The irony is, it’s Gucci’s individuality that has made it so downright
desirable in the first place. Maybe we should all be striving for a bit more originality – that is, of course, inimitable.
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