Blog 29: Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion’s free culture

This was my favorite video from class as it discussed fashion! Blakley starts his talk with a fun story about Prada. She explains how she heard this amazing story about Miuccia Prada, a famous Italian fashion designer.  Prada goes to this vintage store in Paris with a friend of hers. She's rooting around, she finds this one jacket by Balenciaga -- she loves it. She's turning it inside out. She's looking at the seams. She's looking at the construction. Her friend says, "Buy it already." She said, "I'll buy it, but I'm also going to replicate it." Now, the academics in this audience may think, "Well, that sounds like plagiarism." But to a fashionista, what it really is, is a sign of Prada's genius: that she can root through the history of fashion and pick the one jacket that doesn't need to be changed by one iota, and to be current and to be now.

I really enjoyed this talk, as it talked about creative collaboration in such a fun way. Blakley explains that while many creative industries are shackled by patents and copyrights, there is one that remains the Wild West — fashion. In this talk she explains how this is a good thing. Because trademarking is virtually the only type of intellectual property in fashion, a culture has developed where designers build on each other’s ideas and where discount takes on popular items are created for different shoppers.

Watch the Video: http://blog.ted.com/6-talks-about-problems-with-patents/