Readying to write about the ultimate hipster-ripster-insta-couture showdown in NYC this weekend (Style Wars!), I keep coming across ripoffs. The act of ripping it off (as in the design from the designer, not the garment from the body) is huge in fashion these days. Big retailers rip off little (or not so little) designers as just part of the business model. Realizing clothes have a short shelf life in this trend-obsessed, celeb-driven, hyperlinked era, they're committed to giving us what we want: faster, cheaper, and totally on trend.

And in one example of the giant machine munching on its own demographic, Urban Outfitters —those mass producers of the pseudo-folk-punk-homemade — were caught ripping off a T-shirt by Boston-based entrepreneur/designer/
gadabout-in-a-hoody, Johnny Cupcakes. Johnny Cupcakes was in talks with UO to be a designer and sent them samples, including a T-shirt emblazoned with a cupcake-dropping bomber plane. UO loved his ideas, apparently, but never called him back. Instead, they just took their favorite of his ideas and copied it.

While JC learns about marketing the old-fashioned way — pounding the pavement, buying Internet Marketing for Dummies, paying attention to every mention, every dollar — UO has possibly made Johnny Cupcakes' entire profit margin in one afternoon. And the boy's justifiably pissed. But what can he do? Make a stink? Go on strike? He can seethe and diss, but he should know he's in good company.

Fashion's wunderkind-turned-ideophoric magnate Marc Jacobs seems to attract controversy the more successful he gets. This season, he has been accused of ripping off, among others, the completely ahead-of-the-curve Rei Kawabuko. Instead of denying influences, however, Jacobs freely, even joyously admits to being inspired by Kawabuko, as well as a hundred other designers and artists, not to mention movies, music, videos. Did he rip off Kawabuko? No question he was inspired.

There's an inspirational connection between 1970s London label Biba and present-day Anna Sui: flowing bells and skirts, heavy eyeshadows, swirling prints and purples. That kind of connection feels a bit more like an artist being inspired by another artist she loves (and happily talking about it). Then there is the direct ripoff in indirect clothing, as in Topshop. The official source of inspiration for Topshop's Kate Moss line was the supermodel's closet: full of clothes that someone, somewhere, at some point, designed.  It was a shrewdly beautiful move when Topshop then made it known they'd sue anyone who dared to copy them.

And there's the direct commercial connection, a no-holds-barred tactic in which retailer spies simply grab a designer sample and presto, it's ready for the mass market in three weeks. Zara copies (Catherine Malandrino, Karl Lagerfeld); Old Navy copies (Prada espadrilles). Forever 21's being taken to court. H&M copies, but some designers are choosing the "if you can't beat them, join them" route, coming on board to copy themselves rather than being copied without permission (Stella McCartney; Roberto Cavalli). Soon after Foley + Corinna's nearly perfect City Tote came out, Sarah Jessica Parker's Bitten (for retailer Steve and Barry's) offered its own, nearly identical version. That one mysteriously vanished from stores as fast as the ripoff was discovered, though not before Forever 21 lowered the ante even further and made its own, even cheaper version. For that matter, look at the blue sweater dress at Gap's European collection (really, England), then look at the blue sweater dress by Ella Moss. It may not be exact, but Moss got Gapped. (Readers: if you find a better match, send it on.) Everybody's doing it, from handbags to dresses. Nothing, and nobody's sacred.

So here's the question: If everybody's doing it, does that make it acceptable? Is plagiarism just part of the new vernacular of materialism, circa 2007? Well, no. It's just inevitable. Know that if you design something wearable and popular, someone's going to fake you out. Unless your craft is so intense that you can't be mass-produced on the cheap, if your work is so outrageous and pieced together that it's impossible to duplicate.

Enter Style Wars, orchestrated by the House of Diehl (MJ Diehl and Roman Milisic). This is a 21st century battle royal in which style MCs work live, on live bodies, with materials from umbrellas to jeans to anything else, to rip, shred, tear, burn, spraypaint and make/remake the best fashion they can, right onstage. What comes out of those mashups may be a voluptuous horror, a glorious deconstruction that screams louder than the Bride of Frankenstein when she first spies her groom, but it may also be the only fashion left that's impossible to copy.

Long live Style Wars. Extended version in production now. Look for it here, live and in typeface, Friday.

top photo/House of Diehl; middle photo/Bagbliss; bottom photo/nitrolicious.

Jana Martin is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design.