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Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Horizons in Fashion Law: Education, Research, Practice

When: Thursday, November 28, 2024, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Lecture Theatre, Centre For Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, 67-69 Lincolns Inn Fields, London WC2A 3JB

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Fashion Law is a burgeoning, complex, and exciting area of interdisciplinary practice and research. Expertise must begin with fashion itself, understanding its complexity as a creative and commercial industry: its expression through art and design; its access as a resource for cultural participation; its performance through workers, models, and consumers; its commercialisation and real estate; its waste and sustainability; its innovation and advancements in technology. Fashion practice demands not only an interdisciplinary proficiency in the law but also an affinity with fashion itself as a form of cultural identity and participation. Fashion thus extends throughout our cultural, social, political, and legal lives, and fashion research and practice really must live fashion. In this public lecture, Professor Gibson explores the horizons in fashion law education, research, and practice and outlines the importance of attention to legal education in fashion and creating opportunities within the legal academy for the development of this practice area and the establishment of the discipline.

Speaker: Professor Johanna Gibson - Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Director Intellectual Property Programme, Convenor, Fashion Law at CCLS/School of Law

Johanna Gibson is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Director of the Intellectual Property Law LLM in the School of Law and the Deputy Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS). Professor Gibson convenes Fashion Law and chairs the Film Fashion Forum at CCLS and publishes widely in fashion, film, and the creative industries. She is also Editor-In-Chief of the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property (QMJIP). Before joining CCLS, Johanna practised law in Melbourne, Australia at Allens, specialising in Intellectual Property, Media and Communications Law, and Competition Law.

Fashion Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Professor Gibson introduced a fashion law pilot in 2008, making CCLS in the QMUL School of Law one of the first law schools in the UK, and indeed around the world, to introduce fashion law on its postgraduate LLM programme. Professor Gibson then expanded the offerings in 2014 to address the breadth of intellectual property rights in fashion, as well as the interaction between intellectual property and other areas of law (including equality and diversity, commercial practices, data protection, sustainability and ESG, social media and influencer marketing, and fashion in the metaverse), making CCLS home to the biggest LLM fashion cohort in the UK. CCLS now boasts the largest postgraduate LLM community in fashion law in the UK, with 1000s of fashion law alumni around the world.

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