The Legal Fashion Icon: Susan Scafidi

By: Gabrielle Clark

11 / 5 / 23

Fashion doesn’t just thrive on the runways at Fashion Weeks. Fashion is intertwined within the intricate threads of life. You can find it on the streets of New York City or on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. There is no place where fashion doesn’t live and breathe, and the courtroom is no exception. 

Fashion law was an unventured area of law before the middle to late 2000s. It took many legal pioneers to expand the legal community into the fashion industry, one of those pioneers being Susan Scafidi. Susan Scafidi, a Washington, D.C. native was born in 1968. She spent her formative years in Washington, D.C. before attending and graduating from Duke University. After receiving her Bachelor’s Degree, she attended Yale Law School, graduating with her Juris Doctorate. Scafidi clerked for Morris S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit after law school. After her clerkship, she landed her first law teaching position at the University of Chicago. 

Currently, Scafidi is a law professor at Fordham University School of Law. In 2006, Scafidi created the first law school course in Fashion Law. Since 2006, the course has since expanded into seven Fashion Law-related courses. 

It is also at Fordham University School of Law that Scafidi, with the support of fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, founded the Fashion Law Institute in 2010. The Fashion Law Institute is the first academic center dedicated to the legal and business issues in the fashion industry. It is the first fashion academic center not only in the United States of America but in the entire international community. 

Due to high demand, the Fashion Law Institute developed a Summer Intensive program in response to the numerous inquiries from various professionals who wanted to study Fashion law. The Fashion Law Bootcamp is offered each year in New York City for five days. Over those five days, various instructors and guest speakers teach various subjects including but not limited to, intellectual property protection of fashion designs, licensing agreements, and fashion finance. These are just a handful of the ever-changing courses being offered at this learning intensive.

The Fashion Law Bootcamp is open to lawyers, fashion professionals, law students, design students and alumni, and anyone both domestically and internationally interested in diving into fashion law and business. 

Susan Scafidi pioneered the field of Fashion Law, opening the doors for new possibilities, and showing the beauty in combining the honey-coated razor-sharp intelligence of the legal world and the elegance of the fashion runways. No longer will the legal profession have to choose between the law and fashion.