The Knockoff Economy Read Online Free PDF Page B

continued to grow as a center for design, with New York Fashion Week increasingly prominent among the global circuit of fashion shows. All of this growth fueled the introduction of tens of thousands of new designs every season by a very large number of fashion firms of all sizes. A small group of increasingly global brand names dominated the public consciousness: Armani, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and the like. However, these firms, as famous as they became, have never comprised more than a small part of the industry’s total turnover. The fashion industry has always been, and remains, competitive.
    The economic boom of the 1990s produced many millions of new consumers with money to spend on fashion, and particularly on luxury ready-to-wear. Magazines such as
Vogue
and
Elle
grew fatter with advertising pages touting both global brands and high-end niche producers. Fashion also became a popular fascination, epitomized by the hit series
Sex and the City’s
silent fifth friend, Manolo Blahnik. Fashion grew ever more synonymous with coveted brands, which were applied most profitably to accessories rather than actual clothing. (The average price of a luxury handbag, which can sometimes cost as much as a new car, is 10 to 12 times the production cost.) 12 Just as couture had become a loss leader for many fashion firms, for some firms even ready-to-wear functions, if not as an actual money-loser, nonetheless as more of a vehicle for image management than an actual profit center.
    The modern conception of the fashion industry—large factories rather than small ateliers; large firms rather than small family shops; the brand (protected by trademark law) the dominant value of the firm—was by the mid-1990s fully developed. In this system many labels were sometimes consolidated under one roof, usually with an acronymic name, such as GFT (Gruppo Finanzario Tessile), LVMH (Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy) and PPR (Pinault-Printemps-Redoute). These giants controlled a relatively small but important and highly visible slice of the industry. The mass market, however, was and is still contested by a welter of smaller firms producing for and selling through huge-volume retailers such as JCPenney, Walmart, and Old Navy.
    At the same time, another front in the business of apparel was opening: the market in so-called fast fashion. By the end of the 20th century, rapidly shrinking tariffs and shipping costs meant that new labor sources, such as China and Bangladesh, could produce clothing at astonishingly low cost. Fast fashion retailers tapped into this global supply chain (as well as local producers closer to home) to churn out cheap but stylish articles at a very rapid rate. The Spanish firm Zara reportedly offers some 10,000 new products a year; UK-based Topshop perhaps 15,000. 13 Some of these firms have long histories—fast fashion darling H & M was founded in 1947 in Sweden—but others, such as Zara and Forever 21, only grew globally prominent in the 2000s. (Zara opened its first US location in 1989, in New York). By the end of the last decade, fast fashion retailers were challenging the established design houses on a surprising number of fronts.
    Today, fast fashion is epitomized by Los Angeles-based Forever 21. Started by Korean immigrants who placed their first store, opened in the 1980s, in then-seedy downtown L.A., Forever 21 is today a nearly $2 billion business. As Anna Corinna and Dana Foley discovered, Forever 21 can quickly and fairly accurately ape a striking and salable design. Its ability to do this—and at amazingly cheap prices—keeps customers coming back for more on a regular basis. Not all the customers are 21; indeed, many are the mothers of 21-year-olds who navigate the store in an effort to stay on trend and inexpensively fill out closets. But as much as many consumers love Forever 21, some designers loathe it. At her Fall 2007 runway show, designer Anna Sui gave out T-shirts emblazoned with “Thou shalt not steal” and