Imitating Style Websites: Another Local Fashion Faux Pas

There’s just something about the Philippine fashion industry that bothers me so much I don’t believe we have a fashion industry: it’s the sheer lack of originality. Yes there’s the fact that it’s usually uninspired and repetitive, but I, with awesome passion, just hate the imitation!

Apparently, this undesirable trend has gone into other aspects of the industry.

While looking for research materials for my SLR on fashion and patents, I came across what claimed to be a resource for Philippine fashion. I initially thought I just clicked a wrong link to one of my favorite websites online, or its sister website. But no, lo and behold, turns out I was looking at a local “fashion” magazine’s website! What I initially thought was style.com, then men.style.com, turned out to be a really, really bad imitation! How wrong is that?

You see, the new trend in major fashion corporations is to keep an online resource or equivalent for the major fashion magazines. Condé Nast Publications is one such corporation essential in the fashion industry, only because they publish what is the biggest fashion magazine, in fact what some recognize as the only fashion magazine, in the world: Vogue. They also publish the other must-read’s (or must-stare-at’s) for the style savvy such as Vanity Fair, GQ,

and Details. As the forerunner in the industry, they realize the importance of keeping an online presence, so they then published style.com and its male equivalent, men.style.com.

And soon everyone followed suit. Clearly some websites went beyond taking inspiration from style.com, and so went for a similar lay-out, similar contents, and hey, a similar name! Actually, it’s not just a similar name, but a popular moniker for Vogue across the world!

The imitation has to stop at some point. I mean as if it’s not enough that clothes are copied, magazines are duplicated but with different names and models, and now, even the websites.

The Imitator however, can rejoice in the fact that the Original is totally oblivious to her existence.

(I originally wrote the name of the local magazine and the website, but that may be fertile ground for a libel suit.) ;-)