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Indian fashion bells the plagiarism cat
Logos and lawsuits are but a few measures that India's nascent fashion industry is resorting to as it plucks a festering thorn from its side - plagiarism.
Logos and lawsuits are but a few measures that India's nascent fashion industry is resorting to as it plucks a festering thorn from its side - plagiarism.
For years rip-offs have been an irritant and a source of endless gossip as fashion week after fashion week has thrown up new tales of copying among designers, even while the flea bazaars are filled up with mass copied styles at one-hundredth the price.
But the legal victory of fashion doyenne Ritu Kumar in a plagiarism case against a Kolkata manufacturer earlier this month marks a watershed for the $50-$60 million industry.
Designers who have till now shrugged and borne things have decided to step up the heat and fight it out as Indian fashion stakes its claim for global acclaim and grows to around $225 million in the next decade.
"It is very important to fight plagiarism and we cannot tolerate such
rampant copying. We fought for seven years and have just won a historic case against counterfeiters," said Kumar.
"As designers, we have to guard our creations; we cannot take this lying down."
A couple of years ago, there was a major spat at the fashion week between designers Krishna Mehta and brothers Shantanu and Nikhil Mehta, when one of the duo's garments appeared in Mehta's show.
Designers Suneet Varma and Aki Narula are battling it out over a blue poncho and skirt in the film "Bunty Aur Babli".
But what hurts designers much more than these stray incidents of rivalry within the community are the millions of cheap copies that flood the market through street manufacturers.
These rip-offs mean designers have very little control over their creations and lose out millions of rupees in revenues from creating many more pieces from the designs or licensing them.
"We need to be very careful that the products we create with so much labour are not used fraudulently by someone else," said designer Kiran Uttam Ghosh.
"For instance, when cheap, badly finished versions are passed off as
originals, it hurts the strength and authenticity of the brand."
Designer JJ Valaya has introduced a new diasun logo, which would now be part of each of his creations, defining an outfit as original Valaya.
"We need to put in place things that will help us fight plagiarism and as the industry grows and business becomes broader, we need to put these things in place," said Valaya.
In Kolkata, designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee has also been troubled by fakes being passed off as his originals and is planning legal action and better registering of his logo.
"We need to fight plagiarism urgently; otherwise it will just grow out of control," said Mukherjee.
