No. 7 (2026): The Languages of Fashion. Critical Reflections on Fashion Discourses
Fashion Mythologies

Original: Fashion's Trivial Mystery

Pdf
  • Maria Spadoni Battistoni
Maria Spadoni Battistoni
Accademia Costume e Moda
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3906

Published 30-06-2026

Keywords

  • original,
  • fashion's paradox,
  • myth,
  • shanzhai,
  • counterfeit

How to Cite

Spadoni Battistoni, M. (2026). Original: Fashion’s Trivial Mystery . Fashion Highlight, (7), 196–201. https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3906

Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Spadoni Battistoni

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This mythology analyzes two images of garments: a T-shirt repeatedly printed with the word ‘ORIGINAL’ and a jacket bearing its misspelled variant ‘ORIGIANL’. Through close reading, it approaches garments as sites in which the term ‘original’ is tested and deformed. From this starting point, the text conceptualizes ‘original’ as a fashion myth: not an empirical quality, but a discursive mechanism that organizes value, novelty, and authorship within a paradoxical system structurally dependent on repetition. Drawing on Barthesian myth critique, the text traces how originality is produced through linguistic declaration and collective recognition rather than through actual material difference or origin. The mythology argues that counterfeit and Shanzhai practices do not negate originality; instead, they render its mythic structure visible, transforming imitation into a form of vernacular critique. In doing so, the text contributes to debates on fashion’s discursive mechanisms, showing how the mythology of originality persists not despite repetition, but because of it.

Pdf

References

  1. Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies. Éditions du Seuil.
  2. Barthes, R. (1967). Système de la mode. Éditions du Seuil.
  3. Bombardini, S. (2019). Luxury for the Many: Politics and Virtues of the Knockoff. Excursions, 9(1).
  4. Cafolla, A. (2025, December 11). Where the best-dressed people of 2025 shopped for vintage. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/
  5. how-best-dressed-people-of-2025-shopped-for-vintage
  6. Esposito, E. (2011). Originality through imitation: The Rationality of fashion. Organization Studies, 32(5), 603–613. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840611405424
  7. Entwistle, J. (2015). The fashioned body: Fashion, dress and modern social theory (2nd ed.). Polity Press.
  8. Flaccavento, A. (2025, February 28). Milan day four: Cracking fashion codes. The Business of Fashion. https://www.businessoffashion.com/reviews/fashion-week/moschinoversace-milan-fashion-week-autumn-winter-2025-review/
  9. Han, B.-C. (2017). Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese. The MIT Press.
  10. Jarman, R. (2026, March 16). From the archives to your wardrobe—9 coveted runway pieces we hope to find at the Vogue Vintage Market. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/shop-archival-fashion-vogue-vintage-market
  11. Kawamura, Y. (2023). Fashion-ology: Fashion studies in the postmodern digital era (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
  12. Liao, S. (2020). Fashioning China: Precarious creativity and women designers in shanzhai culture. Columbia University Press.
  13. Mida, I. E., & Kim, A. (2019). The dress detective: A practical guide to object-based research in fashion. Bloomsbury Academic.
  14. Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Original, adj., 1.b. In Oxford English dictionary. Retrieved March 25, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3107971532
  15. Pham, M.-H. T. (2022). Why we can’t have nice things: Social media’s influence on fashion, ethics, and property. Duke University Press.
  16. Prown, J. D. (1982). Mind in matter: An introduction to material culture theory and method. Winterthur Portfolio, 17(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1086/496065
  17. Schwartz, B. (2023). UNLICENSED: Bootlegging as Creative Practice. Amsterdam: Valiz.
  18. Simmel, G. (1904). Fashion. International Quarterly, 10, 130–155.
  19. Van de Peer, A. (2022). The Politics of Fashion Criticism: How Newspaper Journalists’ Evaluative Criteria for Fashion Changed Between 1949-2010. In: R. Findlay & J. Reponen (red.) Insights on fashion journalism. London: Routledge, 20-36.
  20. Von Pezold, J. (2025). Counterfeit as Social Goods: The Ethics of Chinese Fashion in Mozambique. African Studies Review. 1(21). https://doi:10.1017/asr.2025.10142
  21. Von Pezold, J. (2026). Logos Unleashed: Giving in creatively for the desire for Global Brandedness. European Journal of Cultural Studies. 1 (11). https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494261415997
  22. Wilf, E. (2019). Creative China and its potential to problematise Western-modern romantic ideologies of creativity. In: De Kloet J, Chow YF, and Scheen L (eds) Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 39–50.