In shopping for apparel, most of us are faced with a great contradiction: shopping for trends and defining our own style. While of course many of us love to stay current with latest fashion trends, it is just as important (and we argue more so) to establish a unique look, expressing your personal style through fashion.
The solution seems to be in the great diversity of options that the apparel industry offers. When looking for a white blouse, for instance, we all know there are infinite options out there, many of them that look identical. Yet how many of these designs are both fashionable AND unique? How can we really be sure the “one-of-a-kind” apparel we buy is such? Are there even protections to ensure that the things we buy aren’t merely knock-offs?
Believe it or not, there is no copyright protection for fashion designs in the US, meaning that anyone can slightly alter an existing design and call it their own. From a recent Ted Talk by Johanna Blakely entitled “Lessons from Fashion’s Free Culture,” Blakely discusses this lack of copyright protection in the fashion industry as both a blessing and a curse.
Essentially Blakely argues that it is more difficult than ever, due to our limitless access to information through digital media, to define ownership of anything anymore, be it a joke, a recipe, or a fashion design. While the lack of copyrights thankfully makes creativity flourish, taking older designs and transforming them into something “new”, too much creativity can make it hard to call anything original. Watch the whole Ted Talk below:
So what does this mean for your personal style? It means that if you want truly unique apparel (without paying couture prices), your options are pretty limited. It means that the apparel industry has created a top-down system in which consumers are expected to reflect “new” fashion trends, and not the other way around. It means that while we’re all about (some) reemerging trends and the awesome creativity of the fashion industry, we believe one shouldn’t be forced to choose between ever-changing trends and what compliments our personal style and body types.
Thankfully, indiDenim makes every garment to your measurements, to your style specifications, and only for you. We allow you to take a trend like skinny jeans and make them truly your own. Not to mention the fact that our fit technology used to create your unique pattern, our modular manufacturing processes, and our online customization platform make us a one-of-a-kind apparel brand.
So feel good, indiDenim lovers, for your apparel is really some of the only one-of-a-kind stuff out there. As Blakely states, there are plenty of advantages of copying, including the democratization of fashion trends. At indiDenim we feel that we are democratizing fashion even further, allowing all consumers to not only have access to fashion trends but to make them their own.
posted by: evan on May 27, 2010 at 5:10 pm
filed under: Misc Musings | Add a comment TAGS:
