When we discuss cases involving the protection of rights in the fashion industry, we usually refer to disputes from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, the history of the fight against copying in fashion began long before the Gucci v. Guess disputes or Christian Louboutin's red sole.
Today, we would like to tell you about the pioneers of intellectual property protection in the fashion industry – the people without whom fashion law might not exist.
Jeanne Paquin – a brilliant couturier at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, whose career was closely intertwined with the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture – the industry syndicate that brings together haute couture fashion houses. One of the syndicate's objectives was, and still is, to protect designers' rights against copying.
It was the syndicate that regulated the ban on unauthorised sketching at fashion shows, lobbied for the introduction of trade secrecy regimes in haute couture fashion houses, and strengthened controls over employees who often passed sketches to competitors. In 1917, Paquin became the first woman to serve as president of the syndicate.
Paul Poiret, Coco Chanel's business partner, was also a fierce advocate of design rights. He was one of the first to sew labels onto his garments in order to distinguish them from counterfeits, and he also developed the practice of entering into licensing agreements for his perfume line.
In 1913, Poiret took over the presidency of the Syndicat de Défense de la Grande Couture Française – a syndicate created specifically to combat the copying of French fashion houses' designs. Although the organisation soon ceased to exist, he later joined Jeanne Paquin in her work at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture.
Madeleine Vionnet – a French couturier, the "queen of the bias cut". She not only dressed Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, but also championed the rights of French designers.
In 1921, Vionnet founded the Association pour la Défense des Arts Plastiques et Appliqués – the Association for the Protection of Fine and Applied Arts. The Association dealt with issues of authorship documentation. The methods Vionnet used were quite simple: she photographed each model from three angles (front, back and side) and left her fingerprint on each label. Vionnet also required her employees to sign NDAs (non‑disclosure agreements).
In 1930, she was joined by Coco Chanel, and together they brought a lawsuit against Suzanne Laniel, in whose possession numerous counterfeits of Chanel and Vionnet were discovered. The court ruled that Laniel's actions were unlawful, stating that original designs are objects of copyright in the same way as any other works, and that their designers are therefore entitled to the same protection as authors of other types of creative works.
We can see that the protection of intellectual property in the fashion industry began with the personal initiative of couturiers, who recognised the value of their work and understood that fashion is as integral a part of culture as any other art form – and that it therefore deserves equal protection under the law.