FASHION PIRATES.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLI, Issue 6, 28 July 1914, Page 7

FASHION PIRATES.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST COPYING. I "Unless something is done to stop tliu pirating of fashions there will be no great dressmaker.* left in Paris in--10 years," said M. Paul Poiret, the famous creator of French fashions, lately. "1 am taking steps to form a committee of the chief dressmaking houses of Paris. I do not want the. mirnb-r-.-to l)c large—about .seven houses in uli. We .shall concert our action towards putting an end to the abuse by which at present almost every . idea which we evolve, every new" model which we create, is seized on and' reproduced by inefficient copiers who caricature and degrade it. We shall try to prevent photographers from selling the pictures of rev.- fashion* which they take at tho race--:* and elsewhere to oh.-cure dressmakers, who attempt to imitate them. We want to prevent now.s----pauor-s from il-ringing out 'fashion supplements' in which our exclusive ideas are scattered broadcast to the world. "Against copiers we .shall take concerted action. I have a list of 60 dressmakers in Paris who are in the hf.iblt of reproducing our models. Some of them obtain orders from houses that deal a'so with us. These customers buv a new model from us and then send it to the ropier, with an order for a down more like it. Those customers we shall exclude from our books. We shall also rsrobablv refuse to deal with the cloth" and silk merchants who supply the cotveing dressmakers with their materials. "At present our only recourse is to create new models continually. One designs a new fashion one day, and a fortnight later it is necessary to produce another model, for the'first has already been degraded by travesty."