With the craziness of driving cross-country and moving into my dorm this weekend behind me, I finally was able to catch up on the weekend's news yesterday, and I noticed two related articles in Sunday and Monday's New York Times. On Sunday, Guy Trebay's article "Admit It. You Love It. It Matters," argued that fashion shouldn't be viewed as superficial, consumerist, elitist or anti-intellectual, but as a potent art and cultural form. As he writes, "clothes are ideas," ideas that are used as cultural, political, personal and creative expression.
This is an argument I've heard, and even made, many times. Yet when I read this article on the contentious issue of designer knock-offs and whether fashion designs should be copyrighted, I had a hard time viewing the designers as artists who deserve protection from others profiting from their creations.

Like all art forms, designers build off of each other's ideas, tweaking cut, color, pattern and proportion to create something new and different. As an art history major, I've learned how even the most original and prolific artists in history were constantly copying and engaging with other artists' work. Artists, composers, musicians, architects, filmmakers and designers do not work in vacuums, they need exposure to the work of others to find their own place in the cultural dialogue.
But just as Picasso and Bracht didn't copyright cubism and Brunelleschi didn't sue the millions of artists who used 3-point perspective after he invented it, it seems unfair that Diane von Furstenburg should get royalties on every wrap dress produced, or Miuccia Prada should get a check for every colored knee-sock purchased round the world.
The Council of Fashion Designers of America is distinguishing the copying of clothes by discount designer stores like H&M and Forever 21 from copying by other A-list designers, arguing that when nearly every detail of a dress or handbag is reproduced, then sold at a huge discount, the designer's ideas are being stolen. Their real problem is that the factories that produce these clothes are able to churn them out and get them to consumers before the "real thing" arrives in stores months later.
The irony is that this has been a problem for artists forever, as there's nothing stopping an artist from viewing another's unfinished work and quickly painting a nearly identical version, or copying inventive techniques, beating the first artist to market and often getting credit for the other artist's innovations. Just consider just how many similar paintings of bathers or sculptures of Jesus exist... are they the property of just one person?
When it comes down to it, the CFDA is really just concerned about losing money and retaining their elite status. I think a large part of that is dependent on keeping their products exclusive and available to a select few. I don't think that the market for discount and knock-off clothes and accessories will ever come close to replacing the designer market, as there will always be people who want the best quality and the real deal.
Finally, I don't see discount store copies as truly identical products, as the quality of the pieces available at H&M could never compare to those off the Chanel runway. It's the equivalent of buying a Pollock poster or the real thing...they might look the same from across the room, but there's a very large and obvious difference, and people will gladly pay many times as much for the genuine article.