Fashion Week Goes the Law-School Route

Fashion Week Goes the Law-School Route



 It could have had a clever campy name, such as "Fashion Brief" or "Legal Runway," but Fordham University Law School's Fashion Law Institute simply billed its event last week during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week as a fashion presentation. The affair was held at the Box in New York's Lincoln Center to commemorate FLI's second anniversary.

Founded in September 2010, the school offers seven courses, including fashion law and finance, fashion ethics, sustainability and development, and fashion-modeling law. Additionally, seminars, open to anyone interested, are given several times a year with intriguing titles such as "Law of the Fashion Show," "Law and the Little Black Dress" and "Nice Ice: Ethical Alternatives to Conflict Diamonds."

Lawyers and law students can attend an annual weeklong summer boot camp to get a crash course in fashion legalese. Plus, attorneys volunteer to give free advice to rising designers and models at the school's pop-up legal clinics.

The fashion-installation idea came about after a panel discussion at the school earlier this year. "We had met these wonderful designers for whom a show at Fashion Week would not be financially feasible," Susan Scafidi, the institute's academic director and an innovator in the field of fashion law, told The Root. "So why not have our own show?"


It featured hair, makeup and nail sponsors, as well as designs by seven of the designers who used the clinic's services: Dimitry Said Chamy, whose installation was made from recycled milk containers; Emmett McCarthy, a former Project Runway contestant, who showed his breezy EMC2 clothing made of floral fabric; Rachel Dooley, who showed her Gemma Redux mixed-metal and vintage-jewelry designs; Maureen Cahill and Elizabeth Crotty, with their line of Keely Rea bathing suits and resort wear; Kelima K, usually a bridal designer, who featured asymmetrical dresses and one standout voluminous kimono; and Sarah Canner, who showed her Vespertine biking designs -- vests and jackets over white shirtdresses.

Twenty-four paid models from five agencies were acquired through contacts and the lawyers who teach the modeling-law class. Models stood in a row on the platform and periodically rotated en masse while members of the fashion and law communities visited, stared, praised, photographed, mingled, sipped spirits and bopped to a DJ's rhythms.

But the event might not have been possible without Scafidi. She has been able to attract formidable sponsors (including designer Diane von Furstenberg and the Council of Fashion Designers of America) for funding, and seasoned lawyers to help staff the clinics. In addition, Scafidi's attention to detail means that seminar participants often receive cool swag like attractive black shopping totes, and volunteers sport flashy lapel pins with FLI's logo: a gavel formed by a thread spool and needle.