Copy Chic: Status Representation and Intellectual Property Rights in Contemporary Fashion

Copying in fashion has a variety of meanings and implications. Copying is socially, creatively and commercially ingrained in the very nature of fashion. Consumers copy early-adopters in an ongoing process of style emulation. Designers are inspired by the world around them, including other designers. And the luxury fashion industry has historically benefited from mass-market as a way of stimulating consumers’ appetite for innovation. The article explores the presence of “copy chic” in luxury fashion as an ambiguous celebration of the conspicuously inauthentic through a study of luxury version of the inexpensive, plaid bag often referred to as a “Chinatown tote.” The article explores fashion copying from an interdisciplinary position integrating legal and consumer perspectives within the framework of the luxury fashion industry. It will be proposed that the regulation of copying in luxury fashion takes place not only through legal means but also via a type of “aesthetic” regulation involved in the social mechanisms at work in fashion consumption. We will look at the current debate within the legal academic community concerning the level of protection in fashion and we will hold this discussion up against sociological theories on current strategies for status representation in fashion to argue that if the norms that regulate fashion creatively and socially shift, then this shift should be reflected in the legal rules.