Fashion has consistently been an inherent aspect of the Indian culture and now fashion law in India is developing day by day. But there is no one specific statute for fashion law, one has to take shelter under different enactments.
The Indian fashion Industry experiences provisos of the law as the conventional laws for the security of intellectual property rights are not adequate to conceal the issues tormenting the style business rather than a portion of western nations.
India has a labour-intensive economy so the India has the biggest workforces of labours in the fashion industry. The customers who buy the fashion accessory also form a part in the industry. In fact, with regards to human rights fashion has one of the biggest impacts on human rights. Fashion law as a part of Intellectual property rights come much later instead from a basic concern of human rights for an adequate labour practise.
In India organisations that are working towards smoothening of fashion law are Fashion design council of India FDCI, Fashion foundation of India FFI, Apparel export promotion council AEPC.
In India a person can avail different kinds of protection for their work. Thew current IP Law in the country, which is very frequently amended, have major grey areas that do not solve all the issues.
In India, the major component in fashion industry is of handloom workers and indigenous workers. The current method of protecting and safeguarding their interests is far from the ideal. The Intellectual Property Rights Acts merely protects some of the rights and is not sufficient. Neither the Designs Law or the Copyright Act provides complete protection to the players in the fashion industry.
An important characteristic of the fashion industry is its dynamism. To stay afloat, it is necessary to keep up with constantly changing trends. Hence, to be successful every fashion-house releases several lines of articles in a year. Keeping that in mind, the requirement of registration under the current Acts may pose as an encumbrance because of how time-consuming it is. The procedure for registration may take up to a few months, which far exceeds the shelf-life of an article. In the absence of registration, no protection is offered and subsequently the danger of the creator’s work being exploited or worse, the creator not being able to exploit his work in a manner chosen by the creator looms large.
If we take the example of Kanchipuram Sarees or handloom workers, they are being copied and sold at a very large scale. There is lack of IP protection provided to them. That is why it is very easy to copy this work.
Hence, in a country like India, where there is a large number of handloom workers and traditional workers, which contribute a large amount if success to the fashion industry, a strict and an urgent legislation is needed which will protects not only the rights of the workers not limited to their right to exploit but also a right can be enforced in cases of piracy.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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