A Fashion Law Dinner Party with Fashion by Felicia

For fashion lawyers and scholars, the Met Gala is a dream hypothetical. What parts of a Met Gala dress might be conceptually separable under copyright law? What additions within reproductions inspired by the archives are original? How might we balance the preservation of antique fabric with a desire to upcycle that fabric into a new gown? These are just some of the issues Felicia Caponigri explores during this dinner party with her colleague Lucrezia Palandri, a fashion law scholar based between Florence and Como, Italy.

Securing a position in-house, especially with a luxury conglomerate, is often at the top of aspiring fashion lawyers’ career goals. But how can you move in-house and, once you arrive at this dream destination, what do your day-to-day responsibilities look like? In this episode, we speak to Viola Bardi, Legal Manager at Kering Eyewear, about her career in Milan and explore how she incorporates heritage and even the concept of iconic into her legal practice in house.

Partnering with culture and supporting heritage doesn’t just benefit a brand’s reputation. Partnerships between fashion and cultural institutions can also benefit a fashion brand’s bottom line. Over dessert, we speak with Giuseppe Abatista, an Italian attorney, tax specialist, and Ferragamo’s own Tax Consultant, about his experience negotiating agreements for the restoration of cultural properties and more between cultural institutions in Florence and the Ferragamo brand.

What makes a great partnership between a fashion brand and a cultural institution? In this episode we explore the legal and ethical standards and rules that frame presentations of fashion as part of our wider culture. The presentation of fashion’s cultural significance often happens in a museum, but it can also happen in a public space, like a piazza, where so many fashion shows are staged, or even on a red carpet. During the appetizer and main courses of our dinner party, we speak to Dr. Valerie Steele, the Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, for her historical perspective on fashion exhibitions. We also explore how museums and fashion brands may have different objectives and purposes. From New York, we travel to the Midwest, to delve into fashion conservation with Sarah Scaturro, the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. We speak about the importance of managing the change that happens to fashion garments over time, and about the cause célèbre of Kim Kardashian wearing Marilyn Monroe’s dress, in the wider context of how members of the fashion industry can support fashion heritage.

As fashion accessories go digital, one of the main issues is how to categorize these born digital objects into traditional IP boxes like trademark and copyright. Things can get even more complicated when artists and fashion brands collide in our blurred universe of commerce and culture. What is a trademark use anyway? Can an artist use a trademark in their work or can’t they? Join me for our coffee and dessert course as we speak to Mark McKenna, Vice Dean of Faculty & Intellectual Life Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy at UCLA Law and a co-founder of Lex Lumina PLLC, about the scope of source in trademark and more boundaries between trademarks and expressions. We end the episode with a future-looking perspective from Europe, when Elena Varese, a Partner at DLA Piper in Milan, shares insights on AI’s use in fashion and more holistic approaches to digital fashion, including in Italian law.

Just as fashion is increasingly going digital, so is fashion heritage. Fashion’s past isn’t just available through archives behind closed doors- it can also be just a click away. But making fashion heritage digital may not be easy. Join us for our first and second courses of this fashion law dinner party as we speak to Natalie Nudell, a Professor at FIT, about her creation of the Fashion Calendar Research Database which uses innovative technologies like AI to make information about fashion weeks scheduled by Ruth Finley from 1941 to 2014 available to all.

You might have noticed a word that is increasingly present in commercials, in your inbox, and on your social media feed: iconic. What does iconic mean in fashion? How do brands use iconic and do consumers use iconic in the same way? Can the recognition that a product is “iconic” increase IP rights for brands in the product’s design or name?With Jessica Barber, Calvin Klein’s Historian and Senior Archivist, we discuss the word iconic in fashion and in the Calvin Klein universe. And Eleonora Rosati, Of Counsel at Bird & Bird and a Professor of Intellectual Property Law, gives us insight into some recent cases in Europe in which using the word iconic was at times successful and, at other times, unsuccessful to expand trademark rights.

We end our conversation about the value of archival designs for fashion design and for IP rights in fashion back in New York with Tianni Graham, the Senior Archivist for Thom Browne. We talk about how the Thom Browne archive and design team work together, the archive’s role in the celebrations for Thom Browne’s 20th anniversary, and about Tianni’s own career path, including her time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art working with Celia Hartmann.

During the second course, we travel to Italy and London to delve deeper into the preservation of archival items by fashion brands, including fashion designs and other corporate ephemera. Our first guest Stefania Ricci, the Director of the Museo Ferragamo and of the Fondazione Ferragamo, gives us a behind the scenes view of Ferragamo archive, its uses by the brand and its purpose for the public. Matteo Augello, the author of Curating Italian Fashion: Heritage, Industry, Institutions, shares a historical perspective on the value of archives for fashion brands, especially those still operating today in Italy.

Do archival designs increase a fashion brand’s market share? Are archival designs more authentic than other, newer designs for consumers? What challenges and opportunities do archival designs present for brands’ trademarks, their protection, and their scope?Over the first course of this Fashion Law Dinner Party, we’ll explore how one emerging luxury designer in New York, Sarah Mae Ettinger of MAE, is building her brand, including through collaborations with Scalamandré and their archive. We’ll also talk to Serena Totino, a Senior Associate at K&L Gates, about the value of an archive for the scope of IP rights in fashion designs, logos, and more.