The Knockoff Economy Read Online Free PDF

our contemporary idea of fashion—apparel produced for fickle consumers in an ever-changing array of styles developed by competing designers—was born.
    The American apparel industry grew dramatically during the 20th century. As the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 illustrated, early in the century New York already had a large garment industry. The onset of the First World War meant that American editors and buyers could not travel to Paris to see the latest designs. American designers like Claire McCardell became overnight sensations as the nation increasingly looked to New York to fill the style void. 9 The industry grew further when, during the Great Depression, the federal government imposed punitive duties on imported clothes as an element of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs. 10 By the Second World War the United States had become an important player in fashion, and many of the features of the contemporary fashion industry had fallen into place: an increasingly international set of brands; diversified, factory-based production of ready-to-wear clothing; and, over time, declining prices as the cost of production fell. *
    For true luxury apparel, less had changed by mid-century. In the early postwar years France retained its central role in the high-end markets for women’s fashion. (For men, Mecca remained further north, on London’s Savile Row and Jermyn Street.) But as the world economy recovered in the early 1950s, Italian and American firms increasingly displaced Parisian firms as the central players in the burgeoning high end of the ready-to-wear market. And at the same time, brands and labels were replacing tailors and dressmakers at the center of consumers’ attention. Early licensers, such as Pierre Cardin, tapped into this new mind-set to market an enormous array of goods that were manufactured by many different firms, but which all shared the (then-prestigious) Cardin trademark.
    The postwar era was a time of continued growth and diversification for the American fashion industry. Established national brands such as BrooksBrothers, founded in 1818, were soon joined by a new wave of sophisticated homegrown (if not always home-born) postwar designers: Bill Blass in the 1950s, Halston (Roy Halston Frowick) in the 1960s, Ralph Lauren and Diane von Furstenberg in the 1970s, as well as associated editors and tastemakers, such as Diana Vreeland, Grace Mirabella, and Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg. New York, with its still-thriving garment district, increasingly became a world center of apparel design and brand management rather than mere assembly and tailoring.
    During this era the high end of the fashion industry also became truly global. Expensive boutiques stocking the leading labels opened around the world, catering to an increasingly mobile and moneyed elite. In the 1970s, the Arab oil states became major destinations for fine clothing and helped keep the faltering—and now breathtakingly expensive—haute couture market alive in the face of an onslaught of top-quality ready-to-wear. For many major firms, couture functioned (and still does function) as a loss leader—a way to polish the image of an apparel brand and foster lucrative licensing opportunities, but not a business that itself makes money. Indeed, by 1993, Jean Francois Debreq, who engineered the purchase of Yves Saint Laurent’s eponymous firm, would go so far as to joke that “if [Yves Saint Laurent] dies, I think I make even more money because then I stop the couture collections.” 11
    Fashion continued to globalize and grow in the 1980s and 1990s. Italy became the new hotspot due to the dramatic rise (or rebirth) of firms such as Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Versace, and Prada. Japan too became a first-tier player, both as a source of innovative designs (Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake) and, for a time, the number one luxury goods market in the world. Russia, after the fall of communism, likewise became a major market packed with new money. And New York