Season after season we get the confirmation that fashion works in cycles when we see garments that were fashionable twenty/thirty years ago reappearing on the runways and in the shops. Yet, at the moment, rather than working in cycles, most designers are plagiarising assorted things and what really surprises you is that they are not even copying designs that were produced many decades ago, but garments that we saw on the runways two or three seasons ago.
Unfortunately, Fay's latest collections are terribly embarrassing examples of such a perverse exercise in plagiarism: for the Spring/Summer 2014 collection Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi opted for tops with prints of Snoopy impersonating his Joe Cool alter ego relaxing under a palm tree.
The Autumn/Winter 2014 show opened with designs featuring Snoopy's bird friend Woodstock, almost to create a sense of continuity. Now, The Peanuts have been tremendously exploited by so many brands and fashion designers that such pieces are a bit too redundant.
Last year The Rodnik Band did a limited edition capsule collection featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock and many other characters; the previous year the Dover Street Market Ginza store launched the Black Peanuts collection, while, if you're looking for something cheap yet authorised, Italian High Street retailer OVS (Oviesse) produces between two and four times a year tops, sweats and shirts featuring The Peanuts.
In fact the real problem of this collection wasn't Woodstock, but the graphic and bold houndstooth designs, coats, jackets, skirts and tops in a black and white shiny fabric.
They were all incredibly similar to some designs seen in Balenciaga's Spring/Summer 2011 collection (remember the one featuring houndstooth outerwear with a pattern made from plastic-y faux leather?). The Fay/Balenciaga designs look more or less the same to the point that, if you put one collection next to the other, you find it difficult to tell which design belongs to which collection.
There were further interesting milder plagiarisms here and there in Fay's collection including red and white barber shop stripes, rugby stripes, varsity jackets and a Mongolian lamb coat that we may have seen already somewhere on UK Vogue in 1966.
The Balenciaga connection, though, is the one that truly stands out and that disappoints you the most. Did Aquilano/Rimondi think that fashion critics/buyers/consumers have short term memory or that you can get away by just altering a hem or a silhouette here and there? Besides, what's the distinction between a famous/established fashion house/label/brand and High Street retailers when the latter copy the former and the former copy each other? Last but not least, if we allow such levels of plagiarisms on a commercial runway, we will also give a bad example to students in fashion colleges/universities since they will start thinking it is possible and legal to copy one another.
It's annoying to think there are so many young talented people out there without a proper job who may have greater ideas for better designs, and you wonder why such things happen. Maybe it's just the fault of the industry: once it sucks you in, the dark forces of fashion obnubilate your mind obliging you to come up with this embarrassing crap. Who knows, maybe that's the case. What's certain, though, is that this is not fashion and an industry copying itself can't keep on existing in the long run.
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