The knock-off effect: how copycat designers are following fashion

Paris Fashion Week is on and copycat designers are waiting to pounce on the new ideas and recreate them for the masses. But is it legal?

A shopper browses items at a clothing store in a mall in New Delhi, India. Rebecca Conway / AFP

See them on the catwalks now – see them in the shops a month from now. When the ready-to-wear shows started in Paris on Tuesday, teams of designers from high-street stores were poised to spring into ­action.

Thanks to their efforts, strikingly similar, mass-market versions of the latest designer outfits will be in the shops within weeks – at a fraction of the price.

Some call it “taking inspiration”. For others, it’s simply copying or ripping off designers’ work. Nearly everyone agrees that it’s pervasive and that there is very little the industry’s top talents can do about it.

Until Wednesday, ready-to-wear fashion shows will be the talk of Paris, with collections by nearly 100 labels for spring/summer 2015.

But before the catwalk models have even kicked off their high heels, designers for big-name retailers will be poring over the pictures on the internet and homing in on the trendiest looks.

In some companies, specialist pattern-cutters and tailors will be on standby, ready to “whip something up literally within 24 hours”, says Jane Banyai, of the designers’ trade organisation Anti Copying in Design in the United Kingdom.

In the 1950s, copies of Paris Match magazine with images from fashion shows appeared covered in thick black lines to prevent the designs being copied.

In those days, fashion shows were exclusive affairs where only a few privileged invitees were lucky enough to get a glimpse of the next season’s trends.

Today, designers have far less control and images from their shows can be zinging their way around the world within seconds with just a few clicks of a button on a ­smartphone.

“It’s terribly easy for things to be reproduced. A photograph can be out in Asia within seconds and they can be in production within minutes,” says Banyai.

With so many imitation garments in circulation, fashion magazines delight in showing their readers pricey designer pieces and high-street versions with more-modest price tags.

Kal Raustiala, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the co-author of the book The Knockoff Economy, says that the practice has become so widespread that most designers feel powerless to stop it.

“Knock-offs are everywhere. They’re almost an accepted part of the reality of this world,” he says.

Raustiala became interested in the subject after a friend who worked in the fashion industry told him about a “comparison shopping” trip he had been on to London.

“I think there are different phrases used, but what he was doing was going around London looking at clothes, taking pictures and bringing things back to copy,” he says.

“I was surprised to find out that it was legal and that it was common practice,” he says, adding that he believes it was this legality, rather than the internet, that was responsible for “accelerating and turbocharging” copycat fashion.

Michael Chan, a New York-based intellectual-property lawyer, says he usually advises clients not to go to court over copied ­clothing.

“If it’s a question of, I have a particular leopard-print pattern and someone else makes a slightly different one – well, the cycle is too fast to do anything,” he says.

“I would not advise clients to go after it. They might, but you’re probably just taking resources away from your business.

“Unless you have some particular reason you want to do it, you just have to let it go.”