Indian film costume: An introduction to the Special Issue

World War I had a dramatic impact on the fashion and film industries in the United States and many of the resulting changes had long-lasting effects on the development of Hollywood’s wardrobe departments. The satirical presentation of French designs in American film from its earliest days related to large and complex cultural issues, including nationalism and economic competition. After the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, the quest for “American-ness” in both film and fashion intensified, eventually affecting film content, as the United States sought not only to capture European film markets and establish the country as the center of the industry, but also to challenge France as the center of the fashion industry.1 US popular culture media’s resulting association of French cinema, “Frenchness,” France, and fashion with immorality, pretension, and bad taste was established in opposition to an increasing focus on American design, which was presented as less commercial, more practical, and, most importantly, informed by “authentic” American values. The “American” values that were being reinvented during this period affected not only what was produced in the film and fashion industries, but also how fashion was presented on the screen. The US film industry benefited greatly from the disruption to the European film industries during the war, continuing its expansion in Europe and increasing its growth in markets outside of that continent.2 Contemporaneously, as the film industry continued its move to the West Coast of America, the foundations were being laid for an expanded industry, based on a more sophisticated, corporate studio system.KeywordsFashion IndustryFilm IndustryFashion DesignAmerican FilmDesign ContestThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The global fashion industry produces a huge variety of creative goods to market. The fashion industry profits by developing creative content as in the music, film, video game, and book industries. However, unlike those industries, the fashion industry’s principal creative production lies outside the domain of intellectual property law. Fashion has not been historically protected by copyright law due to differences in the legal treatment of the fine arts, like literature, music, and art, which are accorded copyright protection, and crafts, which are generally not accorded such protection. Although fashion is meant to be functional (i.e., it must fit the human body and keep it warm and dry), it is also artistic and creative. Most would agree that fashion is rarely a fine art because it also fulfills a utilitarian function, but this should not necessarily preclude designers from being able to protect their investment in truly innovative designs, as artists and musicians are able to do. The law has traditionally treated each field of IP as an instance of discrete and mutually exclusive protection. Patents protect innovation in terms of functional design, while copyrights protect artistic expression. Finally, trademarks protect goodwill and reputation. These firm divisions between patentable and copyrightable subject matter have left the creative designers of utilitarian objects such as clothing without protection. The growth of the fashion industry has spawned an increased public awareness about fashionable designer products. In light of the popularity of certain designers or specific designs, design piracy has increased exponentially. Design piracy is the copying of a designer’s original designs, thereby enjoying the benefit of his/her artistic work at no expense. Copyists can thus free ride on the efforts of designers, thereby discouraging future investments in creative fashion design. Design piracy is not new; however, while it once took several years for a fashion to descend the price line into low-priced production, this progression is now nearly immediate. Technological advances have made it possible for design pirates to obtain another creator’s designs and manufacture duplicates overnight. Because of the pervasiveness of design piracy, the practice of copying is now considered commonplace in the fashion industry. Accordingly, the original designers of iconic fashion pieces stand to lose substantial amounts of revenue after expending the capital necessary to create them. This study compares Korea and the United States to understand the implications of Korea’s fashion design protections. This paper describes the research on fashion design protection practices in both countries, analyzes the present situation state of fashion design protection in these countries, and compares their legal principles related to fashion design protection. To this end, a literature review is presented that draws on relevant studies and national statistical data on both countries. First, the research on Korea and U.S. fashion design piracy can be summarized as follows. For fashion design in Korea, previous studies focus on the current status of counterfeit fashion goods, intellectual property protection in the fashion market and the protection of applied arts including fashion design. However, these studies have some limitations; many lack specific, concrete discussion on the current status of intellectual property and protection methods, instead providing general, comprehensive discussions. In contrast, studies in the U.S. context focus on the present situation of counterfeit goods in the fashion market, the nature of the fashion market, the essential features of design piracy and the legal protection of fashion design under the Design Piracy Prohibition Act. The breadth of studies on U.S. design piracy studies is much wider compared to those on Korea. In particular, as bills regarding the protection of design under copyright law such as DPPA or IDPPA are submitted to Congress, studies on the protection of design under legal laws are actively conducted. Fashion design protection in Korea versus the United States and the relevant legal principles can be summarized as follows. There are similarities and differences in the protection of fashion design across both countries. First, both countries are similar in terms of fashion design protection under patent law. Both countries provide some protection for fashion design under copyright law. Fashion design still lacks the criteria that have been established for literary works, but criteria are being developed to facilitate the protection of fashion design under copyright law. The most significant difference between the two countries regarding the protection of fashion design lies in the political efforts undertaken to protect fashion design. Unlike Korea, the United States has continued to enforce a separate law for the practical protection of fashion design to address two problems: first, the screening process generally takes a long time, which hinders the protection of fashion, and second, it is difficult to protect the middle area of design rights.

Reconceptualizing Nigerian Copyright Law to Protect Nollywood

The markings associated with the physical wear and tear of denim garments are an integral aspect of material culture, pursued as creative concepts through deconstructed fashion approaches. For some designers a textile's heritage and the effects of time are as important as reworking silhouettes from history. While fashion is inherently forward thinking, it is the patina of age that comes from “wearing” a garment that can be integral to the designer's artistic vision. Denim garments possess unique possibilities for articulating the human form in ways that transcend the vagaries of the latest cut, through evidencing (or simulating) practices of wearing and concepts of longevity. This paper explores denim's capacity to act as a canvas for the body through analysis of a series of conceptual and commercial approaches drawn from contemporary fashion and textile designers, who have reinforced denim's origins or reinterpreted it through creative experimentation. The study is underpinned by the author's empirical research, which seeks to reveal both the recognizable and more abstract visual qualities embodied within denim as a fashion construct. Denim is evaluated as a surface for conveying complex visual signifiers relating to temporality, demonstrated through the cloth's unique facility to embody narrative and illusion.

As films move from exhibition theatres to television, from award shows to talk shows, dance performances to fashion shows, the figure of the star acquires a new force. Given the new networks of circulation, mega-budget stage events, touring shows and award nights have emerged as a prime site for the production of stardom. These promotional events are saturated with advertising, dance performances, comic acts and a dazzling ambience that exists within a wide network of transactions between the film industry, the Indian diasporas, event management companies, fashion designers, choreographers and sponsors. This article locates and traces the emerging links between advertising, film culture and television through a specific focus on the role of event management companies. Stars, fashion designers, choreographers, stage designers and sponsoring companies work with event management companies to mount lavish stage shows. In addition, the television telecast design and placement of cameras is also worked out with the event managers. Thus, star culture now also operates within a significantly new economy of televisual liveness that has emerged with globalization in India.

Organizing Patterns and Evolution of Indian Movie Industry

Africa has been placed on the global fashion map by print and electronic media, movies like the Black Panther , and international and local fashion weeks that are attracting attention to its creative talents. Embedded in histories of regional and international trade, colonialism, and globalization, fashion in Africa today is diverse and multidirectional, responding to and interacting with transglobal inspirations. Even then, how to tell this history is a matter of fraught debate that continues to invoke worn-out dichotomies such as African/Western and traditional/modern. Issues about cultural appropriation and authenticity continue to arise. Two recent examples serve as illustration: The book, Not African Enough? (2017), featuring clothes in minimalistic styles created by Kenyan designers intent on stepping beyond the confines of what the world, and Africans, are told it means to dress African, and the description of garments made from print fabrics that are worn widely across most of the continent as ”not African” due to the origin of their manufacturing process in Europe in the mid- to late 1800s. Views like these prevent us from identifying the inventive autonomy in today’s outpouring of dress and fashion creations as African. Because the meanings of dress always are context dependent, the usages of both of these dress styles play out together rather than in opposition to one another. Such processes unfold across Africa, including in countries like Zambia, the focus of this article. Examining the changing place of African print fabric in fashion design and everyday dress practice involving imported secondhand clothing, I explore how changing historical connections, political and economic forces along with global interconnections are shaping how women dress in Zambia.

The proposed paper concerns with fashion and clothing as visual and semiotic signifiers of both the individual and society in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth and its representations in other media: film (costume design) and haute couture (fashion design). As such, the language of fashion and the vestimentary frame of Shakespeare's tragedy are used as tools for visual and semiotic reading of sociocultural anxieties between the individual and the society as expressed through art. Given rich symbolic and metaphoric value of the language of fashion in Macbeth through which Shakespeare conceptualises his characters and their relationships with the societal framework they inhabit, the paper will thus demonstrate how such a relationship can be conveyed through film costume and fashion design. Analysed representations will consider costume design by Jacqueline Durran for Justin Kurzel's film Macbeth (2015) and fashion design by Alexander McQueen and his collection The Widows of Culloden (2006). In such analysis, fashion is, as fashion theorist Elizabeth Wilson defines it, seen as a cultural metaphor for the body and the material with which we write or draw a representation of the body into our cultural context.

India has a longstanding reputation in the film industry, whereas South Korean films have only recently achieved notable success globally. Despite their significant positions in the global film market, there are very few studies that compare and analyze the competitive advantage of the two countries in the film industry. This paper adopts the ABCD model as a complementary framework to the two mainstream theories of strategic management (i.e., industry-based view and resource-based view) to analyze and compare the competitiveness of the industrial success of emerging countries. For the empirical test, this paper uses natural language processing methods to operationalize the theoretical model. After collecting text data from news articles in English related to the Korean and Indian film industries, this study analyzes how many keywords with regards to the 8 sub-factors of the ABCD model are mentioned in the articles using the document similarity measurement. The results reveal the different but complementary areas of strengths. India has higher competitiveness in the factor of Agility while Korea has higher competitiveness in Convergence. This study also highlights the areas for further development and potential partnership between the two countries by leveraging each other’s strengths.

Hindi Commercial Cinema and Popular Culture in North-East India This chapter looks at the impact of the Hindi commercial film industry on ‘peripheral’ cultures in India. The Indian film industry – which comprises both ‘Bollywood’ (as the Hindi commercial film industry is becoming known) and regional film industries particularly in south India – is one of the largest film industries in the world. The industry puts out over a thousand films every year and a staggering audience of fourteen million people watch an Indian film every day (Bose 2006). Bollywood exerts considerable cultural influence in India as it often both mirrors and mocks Indian society. The reception of Bollywood (and of mainstream Indian popular culture which is dominated by the former) among peripheral and under represented cultures in North-East India, is the subject of this chapter. The chapter looks at the love-hate relationship towards Hindi popular and film culture that people in this region have. North-East India is home to diverse ethnic groups, who have historically never felt a part of mainstream India. The region is caught up in several political conflicts with the Indian state. Most of these movements claim political autonomy, arguing that the distinct identities of people in the region entitle them to self-government and cultural freedom. Today, as satellite channels have proliferated in the region, Hindi commercial cinema is becoming extremely popular despite the fact that several political groups have banned such films.

This empirical study tried to understand the effects of over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms on the Indian film industry. The paper analyzes the impact of OTT on both users and technicians of the film industry, highlighting both positive and negative effects. The objective of the study is to explore the changes in the film industry because of the rise in OTT platforms. The methodology of the research involved sending a questionnaire to 100 individuals, which included both users and technicians of the Indian film industry. The sampling techniques used in the study were convenience sampling and snowball sampling. The data collected through the questionnaire was analyzed using statistical tools to get meaningful insights. The study found that the introduction of OTT platforms has led to a significant change in the Indian film industry. While it has provided a platform for small-budget films and new talent, it has also led to concerns about censorship and revenue loss for traditional distribution channels. The study also found that the viewing habits of users have changed, and they now prefer to consume content on their own terms, rather than following traditional schedules and methods. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the effects of OTT platforms on the Indian film industry. The findings of this study can be used by industry to make informed decisions about the future of the film industry in the digital age.

Online Piracy of Indian Movies: Is the Film Industry Firing at the Wrong Target?

The article examines the Bollywood film industry as the main film industry in India. Its key role that contributes to the development of economy is analyzed. As a well-known component in global market the Bollywood industry has developed its own areas of production, financing, and distribution. Being the world’s leading film industry Bollywood is competing with other giants in the competitive market like Hollywood, Chinese and Japanese film industry. Therefore it’s worth studying Bollywood as an economical component comparing it with Hollywood as the biggest film industry in the world as well as considering the India’s economy features.

‘Art does not go global because its creator is consciously working towards a worldwide impact.’ It ought to be straightforward to present a description of the ‘world’s biggest film industry’, but Indian film scholars find it difficult to come to terms with its diversity and seeming contradictions. The biggest single mistake that non-Indian commentators make is to assume that ‘Indian Film Industry ’ is the same thing as Indian Cinema. It is not. The Indian film industry is always changing and as traditional cinemas close in the South and more multiplexes open, there may be a shift towards main stream Hindi films. But the South is building multiplexes too and it is worth noting that Hollywood distributors have started to release films in India dubbed into several languages. India's various popular cinemas are not all alike, and the differences among them are not restricted to language. They address different identities; the language communities sometimes transcend national boundaries, as when Tamil cinema is followed avidly in Malaysia. "Bollywood" is a recent, global appellation, but mainstream Hindi cinema tried to address national concerns even under colonial rule. When the English-spoken media in India clamour for a better quality of cinema, what they desire is a cinema that is forged in the Western tradition of storytelling and narrative.

In the film industry, the largest producer of films in the world is India. The Indian film industry was established in 1913 and is the second oldest in the world. India was the third largest with box office revenue of US $ 2.18 billion in 2017. The Indian film industry is multi-lingual. Hindi film Industry is the largest film industry in India and is mostly based in Mumbai (Bombay), which is referred to as "Bollywood". This paper attempts to predict whether an upcoming movie would be a blockbuster, neutral or a flop. By predicting this, it can help production houses in advertising and to find the best time period to release a movie by looking at the overall environment. This paper proposes making use of classification technique of Data Mining i.e. Naïve Bayes Theorem and Decision Tree on Data Mining Tool named Orange. Data mining is a process to transform raw data into useful information. By applying data mining, we can discover a large set of patterned data. Machine Learning Statistics and Database Systems are involved in Data Mining. In Knowledge Discovery (KDD) process, data mining is an analysis step. Classification helps us to classify the data according to the attributes of the data with respect to a predefined set of classes. Naive Bayes is a theorem of data mining which is able to predict categorical class labels (blockbuster, neutral, and flop) that classifies data according to rating, month, year of release, genres such as drama, action, romance, comedy, mystery, thriller, and other attributes, and values to classify an upcoming movie. Decision tree helps in supervised learning by creating a training model which can help us predict class values by learning decisions from prior data. To perform the research, we used a Data Mining Tool named Orange which is an open source component-based Visual Programming Software Package for data visualization, machine learning, data mining, and data analysis.