This now famous article by Malcolm Gladwell is known for first coining the term “cool-hunters” to refer to fashion industry detectives who scour the streets for new trends, as seen on cutting-edge urban hipsters. Gladwell also notes that the 1990s marked a new era, in which what was cool was no longer determined by couture houses, but by elusive street hipsters whose style changed whenever the fashion industries began to introduce similar styles into their newest lines. The result was a new type of participatory culture – where style was controlled by “cool” people outside of the corporation, whose privileged social knowledge still granted them power as an elite group, even though they were spread across the globe and had no formal connections to the industry.

Yet as the fashion industry became better and better at copying trends it observed on the street, those on the cutting edge became more and more elusive, because “the act of discovering cool is what causes cool to move on.” Thus, Gladwell posits fashion as a bottom-up process which incorporates trends and ideas developed by different groups throughout the world. He characterizes the fashion crowd as existing in five groups: innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and laggards. Coolhunters seek out the innovators in the hopes of being the first to feature a trend, as such success would boost their company’s image and sales. Seeking out innovators is easier than searching for innovative items, since trends change so quickly. 

Gladwell constructs his argument based on interviews with cool-hunters, as well as his own experiences traveling with cool-hunters “on the hunt”.  He adopts the persona of a knowledgeable fly-on-the-wall, providing insightful commentary of all he recounts. Gladwell’s believability is evident through the lasting adaptation of the term “cool-hunter”, as well as the article’s frequent use in the classroom setting (such as “Media and Popular Culture”, a class at the Annenberg School of Communication). While Gladwell was among the first to describe fashion in this way, his ideas are firmly rooted in postmodernism. The world of fashion, constructed from the opinions and ideas of cool folk from around the world and reassembled by the fashion industry for mass market appeal, epitomizes a highly regarded aesthetic innovation ultimately driven by capitalism. At the same time, the world Gladwell describes is poised on the brink of a postmodern capitalist economy and the new (post-postmodern?) blogosphere. If the fashion industry in 1997 (the time of this article’s publication) was driven by an elusive cool crowd whose styles were forever changing, the democracy of blogging tools ten years later has demystified this crowd, capturing and detailing their style through photographs featured on fashion blogs accessible to all.

This article discusses how memes catch on (or don't) and their impact on culture. The first approach is looking at history as either a narrative or a science. The narrative must be plausible, but not predictable, to be interesting. So too is culture. The things that catch on don't follow a formula per se, but in retrospect they aren't completely out of the blue. The second approach is a comparison with evolution. In this view, it is the glitches that move things forward, not just the formula. The good will continue, the bad will be cast off. However, the line between good and bad is blurry at best, and the very nature of parasitic things like memes is to trick the hosts. The article gives the example of a person with a sweet tooth. If the candy tastes good enough to make the person forget about its negative impacts, it will persist, furthering both the good and the bad qualities of candy. Memes are selected unconsciously and consciously. Even in the case of meme-engineering, in which someone tries to create an idea that will catch on by mimicking what is popular, nothing can be predicted for certain. It doesn't necessarily matter how good an idea is (although it helps), but rather the unpredictable pull of many natural and cultural forces that decides the fate of a meme. Cultural evolution is thus not a direction, but a trend, and not necessarily a very definite trend.

The article touches on a lot of different possibilities, but its tone makes it easy enough to read and digest. The nature of taking the side of unpredictability is that no firm conclusions will be drawn, but the article still discusses numerous possibilities. The question Dennett repeats is "cui bono?" or "who benefits?" He doesn't give an answer, or perhaps the answer is that even if one could measure the benefits, they wouldn't necessarily inform anything beyond that.

 Mencken, Jennifer. A Design for the Copyright of Fashion." Diss. Boston College of Law, 1997.            

    http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/articles/content/1997121201.html#fna

"A Design for the Copyriight of Fashion" was written by Jennifer Mencken in 1997. The essay, though short, covers some very important topics in regards to fashion copyright and protection of designs. The introduction considers that becuase the fashion industry is one of the largests and has no boundaries, economically or socially, it is hard to contain.

Mencken's essay discusses the reasoning behind not protecting designs and talks about the process from thought and conviction to pen and paper, and eventually, to the showroom and the streets. She briefly cites the ability for some fashion designs to be protected under Common Law, however, that angle is now since moot. Though the article was published in 1997, almost ten years ago, most of the information remains pertinent. Mencken discusses patents versus copyright and trademarks verus monopolies on fashion.

She continues to argue for the "Implementation of Fashion Design Copyright." She identifies that there is a "conceptual separability of fashion's artisict elements from the functionality of clothing." She cites the Copyright Act of 1976, allowing the line to be cast that fashion design is almost similar to writing, in respects, to protection. Conceptual separability versus the creative process is a major discussion in the paper.

She closes with a discussion on the scope of copyright and the "requirements for implementation." She says, " In creating a copyright system which recognizes the expressions of designers, many old fears, such as burdening the consumer and creating a marketplace monopoly, resurface. With tens of thousands of designers churning out work, it is easy to foresee chaos. How far does the copyright extend? For how long? What would constitute infringement?"

She closes with a discussion on the effect of copyright in fashion on the industry. She concludes that copyright on fashion should be a decision of the designers rather than the people who purchase their creations.

This article is particularly important to my thesis and argument for my paper as it attacks and answers questions about how copyright in fashion can and will affect the industry. This article is also important as it plays devil's advocate and expresses the concern with copyright and fashion and how the lack of copyright can be seen to have not affected the economic aspects of the industry.