WHY wait for the original when you can wear a look-alike at less than half the cost.
Well, that's what many a young girl in the US is doing.
When the US fashion season kicks off and models strut the catwalk parading the latest fashions of well-known designers, eager eyes size up those designs.
Designers like Seema Anand follow the catwalk shows through photographs posted instantly on the Net.
Her company, Simonia Fashions, is one of hundreds that make inexpensive clothes inspired by other designers' runway looks for trendy stores like Forever 21, Macy's and Bloomingdale's.
Their clothes hit the stores long before the originals make their entry.
'If I see something on Style.com, all I have to do is e-mail the picture to my factory and say, 'I want something similar, or a silhouette made just like this,' Ms Anand told the New York Times.
Her company's factory, in Jaipur, India, can deliver to stores a knock-off months before the designer version.
Ms Anand showed a gold sequined tunic she created with a nearly identical one by designer Tory Burch. Bloomingdale's had asked her to make several hundred of the dresses for its private label, Aqua, she said.
The Tory Burch dress sells for US$750 ($1,143) while the one made by Ms Anand's company costs only US$260.
A debate is now raging in the American fashion industry over designs like those by MsAnand. And the increasing incidence of copying has made the Council of Fashion Designers of America lobby the US Congress to extend copyright protection to clothing. Nine senators moved a Bill in August to support the designers.
Imitations are estimated to represent at least 5 per cent of the US$181 billion US apparel market.
It is not easy to ban the copies since many shoppers don't see anything wrong with knock-offs.
Critics of designers even argue that copies are good for fashion because they encourage designers to continuously invent new wares to stay ahead.
A reliable estimate of knock-offs cannot be determined because designers and retailers disagree on which clothes are copies and which merely 'inspired' by a trend, a normal part of the fashion food chain.
Designers say that is pre-Internet thinking. 'For me, this is not simply about copying,' said MsAnna Sui, one of more than 20 designers who have filed lawsuits against Forever 21, one of America's fastest-growing clothing chains, for selling what they claim are copies of their apparel.
'The issue is also timing,' Ms Sui said. 'These copies are hitting the market before the original versions do.'
The designers seek to outlaw clothing that looks very similar to their originals but is sold under someone else's label. The New York Times reported that designers say that if the knock-offs continue unabated, their businesses will be in jeopardy.
MsAnand maintains that her reproductions of designer styles have been changed enough that they do not violate a designer's intellectual property. 'We don't copy anything,' she said. 'We tweak it. We get inspired before we create it.'
She sees her work meeting the needs of the vast majority of consumers who cannot afford designer prices. 'Especially the younger girls do not have so much money,' she said, 'but they want to wear fashionable clothes.'
'They want to look fabulous,' she said. 'It's their right to look fabulous.'
taken:
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/st...41228,00.html?
Designers suing 'copycats' 
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