After Authors

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between aspects of copyright law (as understood in France), copying as a practice employed or condemned by fashion designers (sometimes both at the same time), and the meaning that ‘authorship’ has for the political economy of fashion production. The empirical substance is the result of 18 months of research in the fashion industry in two locations: Paris and Tehran. Foucault’s archaeological method applied to ‘the author’ points to the constellation of conditions that make the existence of the author possible. This study follows ‘the author’ in two differently located fields of power, interrelated through similar and communicating practices. The first part of the article presents the historic formation of legal authorship in the (Paris) fashion industry, the practices of authoring fashion, and the current legal debates connected to the European Law. The second part is an ethnography of the dynamic of authoring practices in Tehran.

Keywords

author brand name copyright consumption fashion Iran signature

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