The Origin of the Work of Art in Fashion: Art, Craft, and Mass Production, and the Significance for Fashion Copyright

Abstract Fashion may well be the quintessential “art” through which to elaborate both the distinction and the relation between craft and art, between art and technology, between technē and episteme . Indeed fashion, comprising objects of beauty and of utility, is an exemplary lens through which to examine the manner of originality itself. not only the originality in object, but also in relations between makers and consumers as mediated through those objects. And in doing so, originality emerges not as confined to the object, but necessarily in the author’s design, as it were; in other words, in the relation between the maker and the consumer as mediated through those objects. The tools of mass production as materials of originality, and the intentionality of marketability as creative choices, are especially salient in fashion. Towards understanding this kind of creative work and considering its relationship to copyright, this article explores an approach to fashion as mass art. It examines this historical tension between craft and art, and inevitably utility and aesthetics, through the lens of fashion and its relationship to technology, from early industrialisation to current tensions around artificial intelligence. In particular, the judgment of Mio/konektra establishes an approach to originality that goes some way to resolving this socio-cultural distinction and clarifying the relevance of intellectual property as a cultural institution. Mio/konektra is thus significant for its influence in understanding the origin (and originality) of the work of art in fashion, and at the same time, insight from fashion enlightens the reasoning in Mio/konektra .