Principals

Fake stuff can make real enemies

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Last year, a very angry individual or individuals, slashed four designer lounges at the Park Hyatt harbour bar in Sydney. The case was a head- scratcher for police, but Sydney’s design community has a hunch it was ‘design vigilantes’, punishing the Hyatt for buying replicas.

See, while we’ve been enjoying Swedish meatballs at Ikea, furniture designers (and designers in general) have been getting more and more annoyed by the growth of the replica industry.

Drexler, who started the successful replicas retailer Matt Blatt ten years ago, told the SMH that replicas are legally kosher. He explains that, “any item that has an active design registration cannot legally be copied. But not all designers register and, when they do, it is only good for ten years.” (In Europe, registration lasts 25 years.). “The Eames Lounge Chair was designed in 1956,” Drexler says. “There is no possibility of an existing design registration for it; hence, we can legally copy it and sell it.” The fact that the word “Eames” is trademarked means Drexler cannot sell the Eames Lounge Chair, “but we can sell the same design and call it the ‘replica Eames Lounge Chair’ … informing the public that this is not a licensed copy … and that you are not passing it off as such.”

Being legal, however, is one thing. Being desirable is another. Least that’s what Richard Munao wants everyone to think.

He, along with some other upset people, started the Authentic Design Alliance – an organisation aiming to put a massive distance between those two concepts and make sure we all understand why.

They believe that “our design heritage and our creative design future rest upon the support of designers’ original work; that original design is an investment; that originals are manufactured by licensed factories producing high-quality work supported by warranties; that support of authentic design is an ethical, practical and aesthetic decision which shows respect to the designer and that the investment cycle needs protection from copies, as not all products become financially successful bestsellers or classics”.

So why don’t more people care about this? Why isn’t a replica Eames chair as taboo as a fake Louis Vuitton handbag? Why isn’t A Current Affair doing an exposé on some shady guy in a garage? Why isn’t more stuff being slashed?

It seems to be such a non-issue that the likes of Matt Blatt actually advertise in design magazines – it’s in almost every issue of Real Living! Isn’t that like seeing an ad for a ripoff Hermès bag in, say, Madison or Vogue?
So why does it happen?

Maybe it’s semantics. A ‘replica’ doesn’t sound as black-market as a ‘knockoff’ or a ‘fake’ – it’s got more of a “homage” feel.

Or maybe it’s because, as Richard Munao says, we simply don’t respect good design here like in ‘oorop’. That might sound a bit tossy, but when you read comments like: “No-one would mind buying original egg chairs if the price wasn’t unnecessarily inflated. I cannot think it is due to production costs. If the aim is to ensure exclusivity, I say “get over it”, don’t be so precious about it – it’s not as if it is such a comfortable chair, anyway”, you realise he may have a point.

Whatever it is, I think we need to get angrier…

Though I’m no saint, I think replicas are wrong and here’s a bunch of disconnected reasons why I wouldn’t indulge in one. It’s unimaginative, it’s like buying everything on the mannequin, it’s sort of cowardly, it’s pretence, it’s what you spend your money on should say who you are, not who you want to be. It’s dishonesty, it’s spoilt, it’s like a design tantrum, it’s like giving your kid a fake Cabbage Patch doll instead of putting two Christmases and a birthday together to get the real thing.  It’s I want it NOW!! I want what she’s having. It’s those damn Joneses, it’s homogenising and trivialising, it’s missing the point, it’s mindless, dangerous, damaging and discouraging.