BY RACHEL SUGAR

In print | October 4, 2007

Elizabethans had The Great Chain of Being, which ordered the hierarchy of the world — each king, noble, merchan and peasant in his place. Contemporary fashion has long operated on a similar ladder, but according to recent legislation by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the peasantry is uprising. New Yorker economist James Surowiecki wonders, though: is this “peasant” uprising actually bad for the royals?

As soon as a designer unveils his collection, photographs are on their way to Chinese factories; the resulting knockoffs are then sold in budget fashion havens like H&M and Zara. Calling this a violation of intellectual property, Congress is now considering a bill that gives original designs legal protection similar to copyright. Fair enough — maybe. (In 1941, the Supreme Court overturned similar measures, calling them violations of anti-trust. But then, that was in those pre-H&M halcyon days). Is it possible, though, that those knockoffs are actually good for business? Enter the “piracy paradox,” a phrase coined by law professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman, to argue that “weak intellectual-property rules…have been integral to [the fashion industries] success.”

The Great Chain of Being Fashionable works something like this: maybe a total of 200 women buy couture off the runway. Not only are runway collections prohibitively expensive, but they are also notoriously unwearable, paired with theatrical, often otherworldly hair and make-up to showcase concepts as much as (or more than) clothes. The New York Times reported that a 2007 Galliano men’s collection was inspired by, “‘Tribal, William the Conqueror, bank robbers,’ said the makeup artist Pat McGrath, ticking off some of the themes as she smudged red lipstick on the stocking-covered face of a model.” All of this to say: what sashays down the runway rarely sashays down the street.

Most of the super elite dress from those same designers’ “ready to wear” collections - Gucci, Armani and Yves St. Lauren - although they dress from the store (or designer showroom), not the runway. These are toned down versions of the clothes that strutted down the catwalk; presumably they are intended to be worn without the smudged red lipstick over the stocking-covered face, meant to grace banquet halls and board rooms of the rich but human. Some designers go a step further with brand name collections marketed at several price points. Armani, for example, offers Armani Exchange (A/X), a still-too-expensive-for-me-but-comparatively-“affordable” collection retailing out of boutiques at high end malls; Armani Jeans, a step up from A/X, and featuring, unsurprisingly, their denim collection, is sold at upscale department stores; Emporio Armani is a “youthful” step up from that, and then there’s Armani Collezioni, a basically equivalent professional line. Giorgio Armani is the apex of the house’s ready-to-wear line, to be topped only by Armani Privé, so couture it can only be made-to-order, and that at a very high price. Other designers are reaching out - sort of - to the less wealthy and more suburban markets by lending their name, if not quite their look, to lower-end collections sold for a limited time at Target.

Knockoffs coming out of the fashion houses themselves are far less threatening to the industry than are the facsimiles coming out of H&M, Zara and stores that specialize in transporting Milan to the mass market without the oversight of the design houses themselves. Yet these renegade designer copies allow styles to move quickly from the elite to the masses, “fuel[ing] the incessant demand for something new.”

On the one hand, this prevents designers from milking any single innovation for several collections; on the other, it may not only induce greater productivity/creativity, but also boost sales. And, as Surowiecki points out, the absence of copyrights and patents creates a richer ground for innovation: “had the designers who came up with the pinstripe or the stiletto heel been able to bar others from using their creations, there would have been less innovation in fashion, not more.”

If knockoffs made a significant dent in designer profits, the situation would be different. However, the cult of celebrity and the obsession with authenticity (see Richard Dyer and Walter Benjamin, et al) as well as a genuine lust for quality seem to ensure a continued high-end market.

Legislation or no, binging on old seasons of MTV’s “The Hills” and “America’s Next Top Model” assures me that the Great Chain of Being Fashionable remains, for the moment, intact.

Rachel is a senior. You can reach her at rsugar1@swarthmore.edu.

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