When fashion is a circus

When fashion is a circus, are we then clowns?

Every time I go to watch a Malaysian designer fashion show, I constantly have this hope that maybe (just maybe) I would see something real, fresh and new.

After reading about Dame Vivienne Westwood’s advice on dazed digital.com telling fashion students to copy, copy, copy, I feel that there won’t be any new designs or take in fashion any longer, now or in the near future.

On an international level, where fashion cycle, marketability and profitability is vicious, imitation can be a form of insult rather than flattery. Just look at the amount of fake goods we have all over the world.

In KL alone, we have a whole street to trade these sad sad pieces of imitation goods.

It is very common for creations paraded on the runway be copied in no time. It is very common as well for designers and brands to be offended by this form of flattery.

For instance, there are cases where designers sue other designers for imitating their creations. Like Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) versus Ralph Lauren when the American giant brand copied YSL’s tuxedo dress from his 1992 couture collection.

The French won the case.

Another would be British’s Topshop case versus Chloe over their dungaree-look yellow minidress in 2007. Topshop lost the copyright case and again the French won.

Meanwhile, back home we constantly hear and see (on social media) the rants of our local fashion maestro, Rizalman on how new designers now are constantly copying his masterpieces and creations.

After some small chats with Rizalman, I found out that though he is not solely mad at the act of copying, he is mostly angry at the lack of skills, craftsmanship and workmanship that most new local designers failed to follow, and producing pieces that just do not make sense (Yup! He got a point there).

But beyond these rantings and sarcasm, what Rizalman failed to notice is that he too is somewhat 'guilty' with the whole copying act. I noticed a lot of Valentino in his creations especially the lace collection and some of Karl Lagerfeld’s.

But the thing that made Rizalman rise to the occasion would be the flare and the immaculate workmanship of his pieces that is highly applaudable. This includes his international standard of fashion show production - on point, all the time.

It shows that Rizalman understands the market and the meaning of it. He knows what the people want and most importantly he knows what he loathes, hence year on year, he successfully controls the flow of his creative juice as to not cross the fine line of class and cliché in his creations and production.

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