The Associated Press

Fashion designers Nicole Miller and Narciso Rodriguez joined Senator Charles Schumer and others in New York on Wednesday, pressing for a law to battle cheap fashion imitations.

"Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it's bad for our fashion industry here in New York," said Schumer, one of the sponsors of the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate.

"It's every bit as much intellectual property as writing a good book or making a good movie," he said. "And yet the law says, come rip it off."

The bill, which was introduced in the House of Representatives in April, would allow designers to sue those who copy their creations for up to $250,000 US and to appeal for the destruction of pirated goods.

Schumer said the legislation would distinguish between knockoffs and garments that are merely similar.

"Copyright law is good at this," he said. "They've done it for a hundred years; they just have never applied it to fashion."

Rodriguez, who designed the dress that Carolyn Bessette wore at her 1996 wedding to John F. Kennedy Jr., said eight million copies of that dress flooded the market.

"It's very harmful to my business," he said.

Dana Foley, a designer with a chic Lower East Side boutique, said the retailer Forever 21 has copied her twice.

"We don't even know how they knocked off the last one because it's not even in stores yet," she said. "It cuts our legs out from underneath us in terms of building a brand, an identity."

Foley said her dresses cost $300 US to $400 US, while the Forever 21 version sells for $29.99 US.

Spokeswomen for Forever 21 and ABS, another U.S. company known for its celebrity imitation fashions, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.