Have you ever wondered what it takes to put a deal together between a major fashion brand and a creative? How to prepare for a meeting with a luxury conglomerate as an emerging brand's executive? How to define value in fashion between creative outputs and financial bottom lines? In this summer Fashion Law Dinner Party, we speak with Christopher Rucker, a fashion industry executive with experience as Chief Revenue Officer at the streetwear brand Sp5der, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the luxury brand Pyer Moss, and currently the Principal of the strategic consulting group TwoSixTwoOne. Listen to hear more about how to build connections in the fashion industry and define your "ask", the role of the secondary market and authentication services in fighting counterfeits and identifying dupes that are relevant for a fashion brand's business activities, and behind the scenes information about where a Met Gala look goes after a celebrity wears it on the red carpet.

For fashion lawyers and scholars, the Met Gala is a dream hypothetical. This year, it was even more so thanks to the Gala's theme "Tailored to You" and the exhibition the Gala celebrated, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. A celebration of black fashion heritage and black cultural heritage, the looks on the blue carpet raised legal questions. How does the Zoot Suit, a core part of the historic concept of a dandy, spur creativity in fashion thanks to its status as part of the public domain? Can we spot separable elements of Rosalía's dress? What was functional and what was ornamental in Janelle Monáe's accessories and cloak? And what legal relevance did eBay's presence on the red carpet have?

To parse the intellectual property rights in looks at the 2025 Met Gala, from Doechii's Louis Vuitton monogrammed look replete with trademarks (including a tattoo!) to Dapper Dan's inclusion in the exhibition and new logo, Felicia Caponigri speaks with Naomi Price, an IP litigation associate at BakerHostetler.

For further reading on some of the IP issues discussed in this episode, see

• Perzanowski, Aaron. "Tattoos and IP Norms." Minnesota Law Review 98, no. 2 (2013): 511-591. (Work published when author not on Michigan Law faculty.) ( https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2608/ )
• Shontavia Johnson, BRANDED: Trademark Tattoos, Slave Owner Brands, And The Right To Have "Free" Skin, 22 Mich. Telecomm. & Tech. L. Rev. 225 (2016).Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mttlr/vol22/iss2/2

What would dupes, authentic fakes, or conceptual fashion that riffs on trademarks and their messages be without the designers who make and create this fashion? In Part II of this Fashion Law Dinner Party we speak with Professor Abigail Glaum-Lathbury from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago about her Project G.U.C.C.I - the Genuine Unauthorized Clothing Clone Institute. “[A] visual primer into copyright and intellectual property law and illustrate systems of exclusion and hegemony.”, Project G.U.C.C.I serves as a starting point for a broader, unvarnished conversation about the fashion system, its preoccupation with money, and a healthy skepticism for how brands are deploying their IP rights and using the law to condition fashion industry stakeholders and consumers.

Dupes - fake or replica products that may or may not be legal to produce and sell- seem to be everywhere. Between the "Wirkin", Dupes.com, and beauty dupes, it seems that many consumers are eager to prioritize value by buying "fakes" over brand loyalty and, perhaps, brands' heritage. But, is there a hidden authenticity to buying a fake, a replica, a dupe, of a Birkin bag or similar fashion or luxury product? What is the difference between a knockoff, a dupe, a fake, and other more specific legal terms like a counterfeit? And what role, and potential legal liability, can influencers have in consumers' desires for fakes when they advertise dupes? To explore the current state of dupes in the fashion industry, we first speak with Julie Zerbo, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Fashion Law. While we might think of trademark law as the most applicable legal regime to dupes, false advertising law is increasingly crucial too, especially as we buy our dupes online. To explore “dangerous dupes” and the legal nuances of influencers' communications, we also speak to Alexandra Roberts, a Professor of Law and Media at Northeastern University School of Law.

A Fashion Law Dinner Party focused on food and fashion has to have sustainability as a main topic of conversation. To discover the important role that sustainability plays in the food and fashion industries, we travel to Il Borro in Tuscany. A historic medieval village, a hamlet, which, today, preserves tradition, culture and sustainability in the heart of Tuscany as a place of luxurious hospitality, Il Borro is run by a part of the Ferragamo family, including Vittoria Ferragamo, Il Borro's Sustainability Manager. We speak with Vittoria about Il Borro's stewardship of the land on which it sits, the historic events to which it testifies and even the people and artisans that have, for decades, called this hamlet their home.

You can learn more about Il Borro here https://www.ilborro.it/en/ and explore their latest luxury collection Il Borro Concept here https://www.ilborroconcept.com/ .

In the first Fashion Law Dinner Party of 2025, inspired by your New Year's resolutions related to food, we concentrate on the heritage and legal aspects of food and fashion collaborations. How can a fashion brand identity’s match a food product? Can trademark rights in a fashion logo applied to leather goods, and clothing, be expanded to food products as a new category of goods? What about place and a brand’s heritage - are there links to certain territories that can help communicate the authenticity of a fashion brand’s food products to consumers? The dinner party conversation starts with our host, Felicia Caponigri, like any true Italian-American woman, talking to her mother, Lisa Caponigri, the author of two best-selling cookbooks "Whatever Happened to Sunday Dinner?" and "This is Sunday Dinner". This conversation highlights how food, like fashion, can be a necessity, but also part of an expression. An expression of love, whether for our family and friends, or even for ourselves, and an expression of meanings and memories that are important to us, and to our heritage and traditions.

Beyond food and fashion as vehicles for individual expressions are the expressions and messages that brands want consumers to perceive and understand when they choose their food and their fashion. The law can have a role in policing brands' affiliation of their products, whether food or fashion, with a place. To parse the differences between geographical indications, trademarks, certification marks and collective marks as they apply to food (and to craft and industrial products like fashion) we speak to Professor Stefania Fusco, an IP scholar originally from Torino who is now a Visiting Professor of Law at The University of Alabama School of Law.

For more information on food, fashion, trademarks and geographical indications, consider reading

• Barbara Pozzo, “Bello e Ben Fatto”—The Protection of Fashion “Made in Italy”, 14 FIU L. Rev. 545 (2021), https://doi.org/10.25148/lawrev.14.3.9. (available here https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/lawreview/vol14/iss3/9/ )
• Stefan Bechtold & Christopher Jon Sprigman, Intellectual Property and the Manufacture of Aura, 36 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 291 (2023). (available here https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v36/Bechtold-Sprigman-IP-and-the-Manufacture-of-Aura.pdf )

While exploring film and fashion inspired places to visit in Rome and the Italian State's preservation and support of Cinecittà in the first part of this episode, some questions were raised about Italian fashion and Italian film's common origins in early 20th century Italy. Exploring the origins of Italian fashion and film raises complex notions like sprezzatura , a Renaissance concept most recently embodied on screen in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winning movie, La Grande Bellezza. In this episode, we speak to Eugenia Paulicelli, a Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Highlighting the contribution of women like Rosa Genoni to the creation of Italian fashion, we explore parallels between historic examples of Italian fashion that changed the industry and current representations of changemaking women on film and their fashion, like the first female lawyer in Italy, Lidia Poët, portrayed in the celebrated Netflix series.

Two central questions over the holidays include what to wear and what classic movie to watch. In many movies, fashion plays an important role, helping the characters express their identities and narrative arcs. The law also plays a role in films with celebrated fashion moments. Take "Roman Holiday". The ending of this 1950s classic with the fashion icon Audrey Hepburn likely would not have been possible without the rules of copyright law. If Irving had not had the right to effectively gift the images of Princess Anne/Anya's adventures in Rome, with the negatives, to her at the press conference at the end of the movie, Roman Holiday’s ending would have potentially turned out very differently. Inspired by "Roman Holiday", and the connections between law, fashion, film, and heritage within it, we explore current trends in the film industry and which film and fashion inspired places to visit in the Eternal City with Alberto Lo Pinto, a native Roman who researches and teaches on post-war Italian cinema. Many film productions and streaming services, including Netflix, are increasingly filming in Italy, creating successful shows like The Law According to Lidia Poët. Many of these shows, and proximate film or advertising productions in Italy, are also linked to fashion brands. We parse the laws that apply to film productions in Italy, and connections between film production and cultural heritage law, including at the famous Cinecittà, with Maria Giusti, a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at Luiss University in Rome with expertise in cultural heritage law and the film industry.

As part of a series of conversations devoted to source communities, this episode travels to London and Naples to spotlight the global reach of the Neapolitan sartorial tradition and one heritage brand in particular, E. Marinella. In this episode we speak with Ben Allen, the President of Marinella USA and the Director of Marinella UK, who looks after Marinella's products (from scarves to ties worn by King Charles and more silk accessories) in the world. We discuss the history of Marinella as a historic Neapolitan brand, the vibrant retail environment that still exists in its original store in Naples, and the importance of its multi-generational management by the Marinella family. We also discuss how important it is for brands to substantiate the heritage claims they make, and wonder how the law should play a greater role in the stories and narratives brands share about their heritage, especially when brands are connected to source communities.

To learn more about E. Marinella, which was founded in 1914 in Naples, visit the brand's website here https://www.emarinella.eu/pages/our-story-over-a-century-of-style .

Fashion benefits from a number of source communities, communities from whom cultural practices, traditional knowledge and even artisanship and designs themselves originate. In this Fashion Law Dinner Party we begin an extended exploration of the source communities that shape the fashion products we buy today, and even the designers and Creative Directors fashion brands hire. In this episode we speak with fashion scholar Michelle McVicker whose research, scholarship, and work as a cultural heritage professional, explores Latinx fashion. How are Latinx fashion designers building their heritage into the fashion products they design today? What can we learn about Latinx fashion from icons like Frida Kahlo and Jennifer Lopez? And, how are we commemorating and preserving fashion artifacts from the Latinx community?

These questions, and more, are part of our dinner party conversation. You can also reference the following articles and resources for more on Latinx fashion:

Why We're Saying "Latine", Chicago History Museum, https://www.chicagohistory.org/why-were-saying-latine/

The BoF Podcast | Willy Chavarria on Promoting Social Justice Through Fashion, https://www.businessoffashion.com/podcasts/luxury/willy-chavarria-on-promoting-social-justice-through-fashion/