Sep 9, 2007

The Knockoff WonBy Eric WilsonNYTimes.com

The drawstring anorak that Faran Krentcil considered buying one recent Friday at the Forever 21 store in Union Square was just like a signature look of the designer Stella McCartney. Ms. Krentcil, 26, the editor of a blog about fashion and style, was interested, particularly because the price of the knockoff — $35 — had several fewer digits.

She had sympathy for Ms. McCartney. She really did. “At the same time,” said Ms. Krentcil, who hunts for copies of designer looks at trendy stores to show on her Web site, Fashionista.com, “it is very understandable from a shopper’s perspective that this is happening. There is an anger that is seething in a lot of girls about the fact that they are shown image after image of these great clothes, but even the cheapest steals cost $180.”

In the struggle for control of fashion between those angry customers and the designers, the shoppers are winning. So much so that the Council of Fashion Designers of America has argued before Congress that high-end designers need legislation to protect them from knockoffs, which are showing up in stores faster and more frequently.

Yet critics — including some intellectual-property scholars and more mainstream clothing manufacturers — dismiss the notion that fashion needs protection. Copying, they say, is the normal, time-tested business model of the industry, in which the very idea of what becomes fashionable relies on the mass dissemination of trends.

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