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 <strong>of</strong> Creativity coexistence with pervasion appropriation and sharing. A panel on the ownership <strong>of</strong> music applied the themes <strong>of</strong> “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, <strong>The</strong> Roots’ producer Richard Nichols, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips and archivist Rani Singh. <strong>The</strong> group discussed how digital technologies have radically changed the distribution <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> writing a show in which fashion itself served as a kind <strong>of</strong> “character” in addition to the four female leads. It is impossible to sum up a field <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> prior works. Access to previous creativity is as important as control over any commercial product. What matters most is striking a collection as part <strong>of</strong> a dialogue with Kevin Jones, curator <strong>of</strong> careful balance between access and control, so that exces- <strong>The</strong> Fashion Institute <strong>of</strong> Design & Merchandising Museum, sive restriction — especially through intellectual property about the direct influence <strong>of</strong> previous designers and even law and technology — does not choke <strong>of</strong>f 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 <strong>of</strong> creative products tion paid homage to the grand style and simple design sense <strong>of</strong> heiress Millicent Rogers <strong>of</strong> the 1930s and to the handtinted photographs <strong>of</strong> artist Cecil Beaton. Television writer-producer Norman Lear delved into the nature <strong>of</strong> creative risk-taking with Michael Patrick King, executive producer <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> “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 <strong>of</strong> its creativity over time. Finally, our explorations <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong>f” a classic design is common in the fashion world. factors play vital roles in the creative process. <strong>The</strong>se must be acknowledged. Moreover, the grand narratives <strong>of</strong> law that purport to describe how creative works emerge and circulate must take account <strong>of</strong> these factors. <strong>The</strong> law must recognize that both artistic and economic success depend upon access to an open, nonproprietary universe <strong>of</strong> unowned material. Although the tradition <strong>of</strong> “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. <strong>The</strong> progress <strong>of</strong> science, for example, has always depended on the ability <strong>of</strong> researchers to build upon the prior work <strong>of</strong> others. Innovators in music and film always have drawn freely from the styles <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> creativity — the “ready to share” paradigm <strong>of</strong>fers some provocative new ways to understand how creativity and markets alike can remain fresh and robust. For this reason alone, the deeper character <strong>of</strong> the “ready to share” model deserves much greater investigation and discussion in the years ahead. • page 13
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 page 14 | Ready to Share: Fashion & the Ownership <strong>of</strong> Creativity F A Essays page 15
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