Our universities churn out year after year, the best new designers that the world has to offer, but there aren’t enough jobs in the industry for them to fill. So those that don’t immediately find jobs upon graduation either end up working in a call centre or set out alone on the rocky road of self-employment. So why then are companies not making best use of the plethora of talented yet under-employed deigners? Instead they employ designers to blatantly copy designs either straight off the catwalk, or from the ‘looks’ that celebrities (or more commonly their stylists) put together, as seen in the pages of ‘Hello’.

Today I had one such phone call.  An large internet retailer that openly describes its look as ‘celebrity fashion’. I’ll leave it up to you to work out who the company is!!  As a consumer aswell as a designer, I am stuck in the unfortunate position of needing clothes that look good and don’t break the bank, yet the designer in me wants something induvidual, even unique! 

Ethically I feel that I should be supporting designers, and refusing to buy cheap rip offs of designer garments that can be found in EVERY high street store at a fraction of the price.  But when it comes to accepting work as what can fundamentally be described as a ‘copyist’ rather than designer, I know exactly where my morals lie.  If more designers excersised their creativity, and designed innovative ranges for the high street and took more of an ethical stance, refusing retail buyers requests for ‘a version’ of a certain catwalk / celebrity garment, then there would be a greater choice on the high street and surely that would allow consumers to be more innovative and individual in their style?