Johanna Blakley
Media | Entertainment | FashionArchive for cultural imperialism
When Traditions Become Trends
Yesterday, I joined “Project Runway” finalist Korto Momolu on an episode of “The Stream,” an innovative multimedia show on al Jazeera English. The topic? Cultural appropriation. Turns out that Momolu has gotten a lot of heat for incorporating African designs and textiles into her work . . . despite the fact that she’s from Liberia. I was part of the mix in order to clarify some of the ownership rules around cultural remix practices in fashion.
Cultural Appropriation in Fashion
When I talk about copyright and fashion outside of the United States, I often get questions about the dangers of cultural appropriation. Shouldn’t it be illegal for Western fashion designers to steal traditional designs from Native American tribes or to appropriate design features from traditional Ethiopian garb?
My research on fashion and intellectual property has focused on the benefits – both to consumers and to the fashion business – of the lack of ownership of designs. Fashion is actually one of several industries that treat their creative output as a commons – shared resources that can be freely reused, recreated and recombined.
This is often music to the ears of free culture activists, libertarians and lots of people in the digital media industries, who have seen first-hand how difficult (and often counter-productive) it is to enforce copyright protections on creative work that can be copied perfectly with one click.
But for people who are concerned about cultural imperialism, this “free culture” sounds like just another opportunity to take advantage of the little guy. Read the rest of this entry »
Johanna Blakley 