Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:10p.m.
By Tova O'Brien
Fashion designers often use their own name as their brand name. It is a marketing tool which is meant to help create familiarity.
But that does not mean they're necessarily responsible for every stitch in their garments.
Twice a year, every year Wellington-based fashion designer Alexandra Owen puts pen to paper and nuts out designs that will eventually hit the runway and the streets.
"Everything that we try to do is very original," she says. "We work off new patterns and we invest a lot of time and energy and creativity into producing our own designs."
And that's what most designers do right? Wrong, as seen in Fashion Week this year with Trelise Cooper's controversial little pink bow. The main feature of an otherwise plain grey jersey was brought from an embroiderer who also sold the design to High Street store Topshop.
But why would designers be buying designs in the first place? Shouldn't they be responsible for the creation of their wares? It's a common assumption.
"We assume because we hear about them that they are intimately involved with all their design, but when you think about it logically someone who's producing season after season, multiple ranges of clothing and other perhaps ranges of goods they just can't possibly be involved in designing every single element," says lawyer Corinne Blumsky.
But it's that "designing of every element" that's so valuable to smaller boutique businesses.
"Sourcing influences from elsewhere is not really anything that we would do, and we try to be very original," says Owen. "If we see that there's anything around at the same time that's in a similar vein to what we're doing, we tend to move on from that."
But for a lot of designers working on a larger scale, giving a garment their personal stamp of approval is enough.
"If the vision is theirs and the actual overall design is theirs, how they bring that together to actually articulate their vision is really up to them," says Ms Blumsky, "and that can involve designing it themselves, it can involve working with external designers or even buying in designs."
And while outsourcing for designs is considered acceptable, copying is not.
"I imagine if someone wants to copy something it would be fairly easy for them to change a couple of lines and put a different label on it," says Owen. "I'm sure that's common practice around the world."
But there's a fine line between poaching ideas and shared inspiration - after all, fashion is a trend-based industry.
In order for it to be theft or a copyright infringement the designer would have to be caught directly copying. But being inspired by the same story, experience or culture can be responsible for design similarities.
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