James Surowiecki penned an interesting article in this week’s New Yorker about the paradox of fashion piracy. On the eve of potentially industry-changing legislation that would afford legal copyright protection to fashion designers, Surowiecki ponders the economic impact and benefits knock-offs actually provide to the designers.

To be clear, he’s referring to knock-offs–not counterfeits–and there IS a distinction. Knock-offs are the wallet-friendly almost-copies that are made available to the masses almost before the originals hit the runways. Very similar in design, they don’t purport to be the original…merely an affordable alternative. Counterfeits, however, are illegal copies: pretending to be authentic, labeled with the designer’s trademark, being sold AS the original.

The paradox stems from the basic dilemma that underpins the economics of fashion: for the industry to keep growing, customers must like this year’s designs, but they must also become dissatisfied with them, so that they’ll buy next year’s.

I can see his point. For fashion to continue to innovate, they need motivation. Consumer boredom is a great motivator. And the best way to bore consumers is to overexpose them, inundate them with copy after ever-worse copy (like in Multiplicity) until it’s done to death.

…fashion is one of the few industries in the world where people are still willing to pay a considerable premium to own original brands instead of imitations. (That’s why counterfeits, which pretend to be original products, are illegal.) The best evidence of this is the fact that luxury-goods makers, far from cutting their prices in response to the knockoff boom, have instead been able to raise prices consistently.

This could explain why it seems that design houses are not being very diligent about combating counterfeits. Day after day we see hundreds, even thousands of blatant counterfeits being listed on auction sites like eBay and iOffer. Could it be that they understand that counterfeits really aren’t digging into their own profits – and possibly fueling even more demand for the real thing?

I think we’re going to reach a tipping point – where trends suddenly become unfashionable. Where people tire of spending thousands on a designer original only to see it get lost in a sea of $50 copies on the arms of every tween in the mall. Where we value the unique over the mass-produced. Where original, one-of-a-kind pieces by little-known artists, made with obscure materials, vintage findings and (dare we hope) earth-friendly processes are the holy grail. We’ve seen it in jewelry. We’ve seen it in couture. I think we’ll see it in handbags next. Check out a site like Etsy and tell me I’m wrong.