Testimony of David Wolfe, Creative Director The ... - Public Knowledge

s e c t i o n o f b o o k , t i t l e o f e s s a y
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street,
fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”
— Coco Chanel
page 12 | Ready to Share: Fashion & the Ownership of Creativity
coexistence with pervasion appropriation and sharing.
A panel on the ownership of music applied the themes of
“ready to share” to musical creativity and sampling.
Moderated by Jonathan Taplin, the panel featured mash-up
artist Danger Mouse, musician and producer T Bone Burnett,
The Roots’ producer Richard Nichols, singer-songwriter Sam
Phillips and archivist Rani Singh. The group discussed how
digital technologies have radically changed the distribution
of music, giving artists the potential for much greater control
over their business affairs and greater ability to reap
economic gains directly.
Los Angeles designer Kevan Hall presented his Spring 2005
spoke about the special challenges of writing a show in
which fashion itself served as a kind of “character” in addition
to the four female leads.
It is impossible to sum up a field of inquiry that is still
unfolding and fraught with open questions and speculative
answers. Still, several important insights emerged from the
“Ready to Share” conference and the commissioned essays.
First, it is clear that creativity critically depends upon its
social context and the collective legacy of prior works.
Access to previous creativity is as important as control over
any commercial product. What matters most is striking a
collection as part of a dialogue with Kevin Jones, curator of
careful balance between access and control, so that exces-
The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising Museum,
sive restriction — especially through intellectual property
about the direct influence of previous designers and even
law and technology — does not choke off future creativity.
other arts, such as watercolors paintings and photographs,
on his contemporary designs. Hall explained how his collec-
A second insight is that thriving markets of creative products
tion paid homage to the grand style and simple design sense
of heiress Millicent Rogers of the 1930s and to the handtinted
photographs of artist Cecil Beaton.
Television writer-producer Norman Lear delved into the
nature of creative risk-taking with Michael Patrick King,
executive producer of Sex and the City. Each worked in a
different decade and with different networks — Lear for
CBS in the 1970s, King for HBO in the 1990s — but each
recounted episodes in which intellectual property restrictions
threatened to derail their creative plans. King also
require an open commons of “raw material” — old works,
unowned words and images, freely accessible characters,
plots and themes — to assure fresh and robust creativity.
Again, balance is key. Creators must have the means to earn
money for their work, but an overdeveloped marketplace
that encloses the commons is likely to undermine the quality
and vigor of its creativity over time.
Finally, our explorations of creativity in fashion suggest
that we may have to modify our ideas about individual
originality. Many social, community and intergenerational
Which one is the
real Chanel jacket?
“Knocking off”
a classic design is
common in the
fashion world.
factors play vital roles in the creative process. These must be
acknowledged. Moreover, the grand narratives of law that
purport to describe how creative works emerge and circulate
must take account of these factors. The law must recognize
that both artistic and economic success depend upon access
to an open, nonproprietary universe of unowned material.
Although the tradition of “ready to share” is more evident
in the fashion world, its dynamics can be seen in nearly any
field whose creativity occurs in a collective, social context.
The progress of science, for example, has always depended
on the ability of researchers to build upon the prior work
of others. Innovators in music and film always have drawn
freely from the styles of prior artists and traditions. By
focusing on a fact that intellectual property law largely
discounts — that appropriation, sharing and transformation
are critical elements in the eternal dance of creativity — the
“ready to share” paradigm offers some provocative new
ways to understand how creativity and markets alike can
remain fresh and robust. For this reason alone, the deeper
character of the “ready to share” model deserves much
greater investigation and discussion in the years ahead. •
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