Coco Chanel

"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only," Coco Chanel once said. "Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening." Today, the truth of Chanel's statement is particularly evident in the burgeoning intersection of fashion and technology. What with bras that tweet, Warby Parker-designed Google Glass, and an app that hunts down that cool bag you saw on the subway, the way we shop and dress ourselves increasingly relies on the digital. 

Adaptations, also known as blatant knockoffs, have always been a part of fashion, but they used to occur at a more civilized pace. Coco Chanel was famously relaxed about the issue; despite banding with Madeleine Vionnet to sue one particularly shameless copyist in the 1930s, when Paris was the undisputed center of the industry, she later authorized American dressmakers like David Kidd of Jablow to clone her signature nubby tweed suits for the common folk.