Postmodern Theory and Internet George Ritzer

Lessons from Fashions Free Culture 

Johanna Blakley

Johanna Blakley: I heard this amazing story about Miuccia Prada. She’s an 

Italian fashion designer. She goes to this vintage store in Paris with a friend of 

hers. She’s rooting around, she finds this one jacket by Balenciaga—she loves 

it. She’s turning it inside out. She’s looking at the seams. She’s looking at the 

construction.Her friend says, “Buy it already.” She said, “I’ll buy it, but I’m also 

going to replicate it.” Now, the academics in this audience may think, “Well, 

that sounds like plagiarism.” But to a fashionista, what it really is is a sign of 

Prada’s genius: that she can root through the history of fashion and pick the  

one jacket that doesn’t need to be changed by one iota, and to be current and  

to be now.

1:00 You might also be asking whether it’s possible that this is illegal for her to 

do this. Well, it turns out that it’s actually not illegal. In the fashion industry, 

there’s very little intellectual property protection. They have trademark 

protection, but no copyright protection and no patent protection to speak of. 

All they have, really, is trademark protection, and so it means that anybody 

could copy any garment on any person in this room and sell it as their own 

design. The only thing that they can’t copy is the actual trademark label within 

that piece of apparel. That’s one reason that you see logos splattered all over 

these products. It’s because it’s a lot harder for knock-off artists to knock off 

these designs because they can’t knock off the logo. But if you go to Santee 

Alley, yeah. (Laughter) Well, yeah. Canal Street, I know. And sometimes these 

are fun, right?

1:57 Now, the reason for this, the reason that the fashion industry doesn’t have 

any copyright protection is because the courts decided long ago that apparel is 

too utilitarian to qualify for copyright protection.They didn’t want a handful 

of designers owning the seminal building blocks of our clothing. And then 

everybody else would have to license this cuff or this sleeve because Joe Blow 

owns it. But too utilitarian? I mean is that the way you think of fashion? This  

is Vivienne Westwood. No! We think of it as maybe too silly, too unnecessary.

2:31 Now, those of you who are familiar with the logic behind copyright 

protection—which is that without ownership, there is no incentive to 

innovate—might be really surprised by both the critical success of the fashion 

industry and the economic success of this industry. What I’m going to argue 

Lessons from Fashions Free Culture ………………………………………………………… Johanna Blakley

https://www.upworthy.com/the-unexpected-thing-that-fashion-does-hippies-love-and-corporations-are-totally-scared-of

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today is thatbecause there’s no copyright protection in the fashion industry, 

fashion designers have actually been able to elevate utilitarian design, things to 

cover our naked bodies, into something that we consider art.Because there’s no 

copyright protection in this industry, there’s a very open and creative ecology  

of creativity.

3:09 Unlike their creative brothers and sisters, who are sculptors or photo-

graphers or filmmakers or musicians, fashion designers can sample from all their 

peers’ designs. They can take any element from any garment from the history 

of fashion and incorporate it into their own design. They’re also notorious 

for riffing off of the zeitgeist. And here, I suspect, they were influenced by the 

costumes in Avatar.Maybe just a little. Can’t copyright a costume either.

3:39 Now, fashion designers have the broadest palette imaginable in this 

creative industry. This wedding dress here is actually made of sporks, and this 

dress is actually made of aluminum. I’ve heard this dress actually sort of sounds 

like wind chimes as they walk through. So, one of the magical side effects of 

having a culture of copying, which is really what it is, is the establishment of 

trends. People think this is a magical thing. How does it happen? Well, it’s 

because it’s legal for people to copy one another.

4:10 Some people believe that there are a few people at the top of the fashion 

food chain who sort of dictate to us what we’re all going to wear, but if you talk 

to any designer at any level, including these high-end designers, they always say 

their main inspiration comes from the street: where people like you and me remix 

and match our own fashion looks. And that’s where they really get a lot of their 

creative inspiration, so it’s both a top-down and a bottom-up kind of industry.

4:39 Now, the fast fashion giants have probably benefited the most from the 

lack of copyright protection in the fashion industry. They are notorious for 

knocking off high-end designs and selling them at very low prices. And they’ve 

been faced with a lot of lawsuits, but those lawsuits are usually not won by 

fashion designers. The courts have said over and over again, “You don’t need 

any more intellectual property protection.” When you look at copies like this, 

you wonder: How do the luxury high-end brands remain in business? If you 

can get it for 200 bucks, why pay a thousand? Well, that’s one reason we had 

a conference here at USC a few years ago. We invited Tom Ford to come—

the conference was called, “Ready to Share: Fashion and the Ownership of 

Creativity”—and we asked him exactly this question.Here’s what he had to say. 

He had just come off a successful stint as the lead designer at Gucci, in case you 

didn’t know.

Lessons from Fashions Free Culture ………………………………………………………… Johanna Blakley

https://www.upworthy.com/the-unexpected-thing-that-fashion-does-hippies-love-and-corporations-are-totally-scared-of

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