The Tragic Comedy

In this issue, renowned fashion critic and entrepreneur Kanika Bhatia takes on the topic of originality. A lot of us might be ageing in experience but we still refuse to admit that ‘smart copying’ is plagiarism nevertheless, she writes.

They say there is no originality in tyrants and designers of today. True, but how bad is the situation really?

Counterfeiting products being the order of the day, it’s only a matter of time when all we are competing on is price, perfect marketplace of original economics after all. Imitation might be the highest form of appreciation but I hate to window shop on a good day, playing the ‘who copied it best’ game. For years, the thumb rule involved, breakthrough fashion created by designers, copied badly here and there by smaller vendors, and everyone gets a piece of the cake. Current scenario, however, has limited originality to a relatively smaller percentage of designers, considering every third person in metropolitans is a ‘designer’ of sort and exclusivity waving back at us as it moves down the drain.