• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.17-35
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• 2024

Traditionally, design knock-off has been negatively perceived as it can undermine the unique value of a brand by unauthorizedly appropriating a designer's creative efforts without compensation. On the contrary, the piracy paradox refers to the idea that knock-off in design can actually promote innovation within the fashion industry and benefit creators. This study proposes a new concept called "Open Fashion" by applying an open-source license framework from the software industry to fashion data. Open Fashion aims to promote sharing and utilization of fashion data, offering institutional mechanisms to address the issue of design knock-off from ethical and economic perspectives. Based on concepts of "open-source licenses" widely used in the software industry and "creative commons (CC)" licenses in the content field, this study developed an "Open Fashion License (OFL)" tailored to fashion data. This study examined open-source licenses basedon the latest "Open Source Software License Guide" provided by NIPA and "creative commons (CC)" licenses in the content field. It applies them to fashion data. The Open Fashion License is finalized basedon review and consensus of five experts. Consequently, this study proposed three types of OFL, depending on whether the original creator's work was modified and the obligation to redistribute modified data: 1) Permissive, 2) Copyleft, and 3) Source-Available. This study seeks to promote ongoing innovation and growth in the fashion industry by creating ethical and transparent systems that could formalize the cyclical nature of fashion, as described in the piracy paradox theory.