Between the open-source label and the name-as-brand sat a whole spectrum of designers wrestling, without the vocabulary for it, with what originality even is. I wrote about Necklush, the soft jersey "necklace" by Stephano Diaz and his partner, a single clever idea, instantly knockoff-able, the kind of design that lives or dies on whether the world credits the inventor. I wrote about Lorick, by Abigail Lorick, a signature strong enough that you could spot the hand.
What I was circling, post after post, is the oldest unanswered question in fashion: an industry with almost no copyright protection for the cut of a garment, where the copy is constant and legal, and originality is a reputation more than a right.
That unprotected gap is exactly the terrain generative AI has now flooded. When a machine can generate ten thousand variations on a designer's signature overnight, the problem Necklush faced on a tiny scale becomes the problem the whole industry faces at once. The US Copyright Office's work on AI and the EU AI Act are trying to answer, at industrial scale, the question a jersey necklace raised on a small one: if you cannot own the idea, what can you own?
The answer this blog kept circling, and my career keeps confirming, is the same: you own your name, your provenance, and your reputation for being first. Everything else was always copyable.