open source sewing?

a fascinating article from IHT about burdastyle and their developing business around removing the copyright restriction on their clothing patterns in an attempt to broaden the reach/improve their designs.

of course, copying and blatent rip-offs have existed forever in fashion and with the near zero cost of exhanging this information electronically, the problem has grown. so, maybe embracing this technology will help one designer avoid the plight facing the music industr.

eventually, they'll offer a "family tree" of each design showing how it's improved with each new designers iteration. interesting to see where this goes, obviously there's massive market for hobbyist sewers, we'll see how far upmarket this goes.

OILILY has done some of this with their Open Studio allowing externally artists to submit new t-shirt designs and then using the ones the deem best. this model has been developed further by things like cafepress. i think this is a great next step for Open Studio, let's make the process democratic by sharing the designs and allowing the market to decide.