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Copycat Culture and Fashion
Fashion Studies

In today’s world, where fashion has become as important as food, people of every class want to have high-end fashion design or the design that trending. But the trending fashion is not affordable for middle-class or lower middle-class people. So, to resolve this issue, the concept of copycat evolved. These days, copycat has become a common culture. There are hundreds of small-scale fashion designers or firms that largely copy the latest design and imprint it on a low-priced fabric and make it available for the middle-income group people at an affordable price.

What is the Meaning of Copycat Culture?

The literal meaning of copycat is to imitate someone else’s act, behavior, ideas, design, and fashion. This is another fact that people of lower income groups cannot afford the dresses designed by a popular fashion designer or marketed by the big brands, like Adidas, Nike, Puma, H&M, etc., but these people, through movies, web series, TV serials, and advertisements, can easily check out all the new designs and then want to have it.


Understanding the feelings of the people of these lower income group, many fashion designers and firms create the same design on cheap fabric and make it available (with same design) for all classes of people, and such practices by different groups of people involved in the fashion industry are known as "copycat culture."

Advantages of Copycat Culture

Following are the significant benefits of copycat culture:

  • Life became easy for budding fashion designers, as they can learn creativity and new designs (provided not paying attention only on copying others, but rather with intention to learn from their seniors);

  • It gives more popularity to the designers who created the unique and trendy designs without putting much investments in advertisement of their works (provided the copying person giving credit or attribution to the designer who actually created that);

  • The trendy designs reach remote parts of the country in a few days;

  • The actors and other celebrities who are endorsing such fashion designers or firms also get more and more popular among the youngsters; and

  • Last but not the least, people of lower income groups can also have the expensive designs at a lower price or budget price that they can actually afford.

Disadvantages of Copycat Culture

Following are the serious concerns that arose because of copycat culture:

  • As the same and trendy design is available at a lower price, why will people pay more money? As a result of this, it causes big financial loss to the firms or the individual fashion designer who created the original design after investing lots of time and money;

  • It discourages the creative and innovative designers who after putting so much efforts create a design and thousands of people take advantage of that without even giving credit to him or her; and

  • Last but not the least, it also discourages the upcoming fashion designers in two ways: first, if they get good credit and income, simply by copying others, then why they would put much efforts in learning and creating new or unique design. And, secondly, as they see that there is no protection of their works; therefore, why to put so much efforts.

Imitating or copying others' style, design, and ideas and then implementing it for one’s own benefit is definitely not correct, neither legally nor ethically. The fashion industry is growing very fast across the world and hence the need to protect the interests of innovative fashion designers, as intellectual property, is prime concern, especially in the world of copycat culture. Giving legal protection to innovative designs and creative designers is essentially required, as it will preserve the interests of fashion designers and also encourage the upcoming fashion designers.

Conclusion

The culture of copycat has penetrated so deeply in our society (globally) that it is very difficult to deal with. Secondly, it has negative as well as positive aspects, and at the same time, protecting the interests of all those fashion designers and respective firms, is also an essential point. There are many loopholes, which cannot be addressed adequately. This is the reason that even the law-making body is silent on this point. Nonetheless, being a law-abiding citizen, we should also think on this point and definitely should try to find some middle path.

References

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