Susan Scafidi was quoted in an LLM Guide article about the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law.
When Susan Scafidi launched the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School in 2010, her initial goal was to try to establish fashion law as a mainstream academic discipline alongside all the other fields—banking law, sports law, securities law, etc.
“I heard a lot of laughter at first,” she says. “But our goal was achieved faster than I’d dreamed.”
The institute was founded with the support of designer Diane von Furstenberg and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and was the first academic center dedicated to legal and business issues relating to the industry. Fordham’s fashion law LL.M. is also one of the first to offer graduate law students a particular focus on the industry; courses include intellectual property, business and finance—including areas like investment, employment law, and real estate—international trade and government regulation, and consumer culture and civil rights.
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“The most important thing for a student who wants to be in this field is to be a problem solver for the creative industries,” she says. “Maybe you’re solving a labor issue, or real estate. It’s not just fashion, clothing, design. You have to think as a business lawyer—licensing agreements, drafting, etc. Students shouldn’t come in and say, ‘we’re just doing fashion law.’ It starts with understanding business.”
