While many choose to mock and scoff at the select group of chic women and dapper gentlemen who dedicate their lives to the art of fashion, they neglect to understand the tremendous skill and intelligence needed in order to succeed within the highly competitive multi-billion dollar fashion industry. As Anna Wintour – the Editor in Chief at American Vogue and quite possibly the most powerful woman in the consumer market – states in the opening scene of the documentary The September Issue “I think what I often see is that people are frightened about fashion. Because it scares them or makes them feel insecure they just put it down. On the whole people that may say, the mean things about our world… I think that’s usually because they feel, in some ways, excluded or, you know, not a part of ‘the cool group’ so as a result they just mock it.”
Being recognized, let alone acknowledged by Miss Wintour is anything but a simple task, and it certainly requires a lot more than an eye for design and astounding creativity. The Loyola Law School, located in downtown Los Angeles, hones in on this facet of the industry, providing aspiring designers with the knowledge of business and law imperative to climbing in the ranks of the fashion world.
This weeklong intensive program titled “The Fashion Law Project” is just now wrapping up, the final day being August 1st. The course, geared towards the likes of lawyers to fashion entrepreneurs, provides a complex overview of the fundamentals of brand building within the context of the fashion industry. The list of individuals who have been selected to teach the course sounds more like a lecture series than a group of professors, as each has experienced an in depth immersion into the topic of study through their professional careers: the lead professor, Staci Jennifer Riordan is chair of the Fashion Law Practice Group at Fox Rothschild LLP, adjunct professor Deborah Greaves is the former general counsel of brand True Religion, etc. In addition, the program offers a true lecture series drawing multiple experts in the field who hold top positions at major companies such as Life Style and The Food Network.
The program is broken into two distinct parts. It begins with an introduction to the fundamentals of fashion law, as to provide a similar foundation from which each student is able to better understand the detailed study of brand building provided in the latter half. Additionally, in aims to truly instill these unique skills within the students, a hypothetical branding case study will span the length of the course, which will require the application and implementation of this new knowledge.
