How Fashion and Fast Food Create a Perfect Learning Combo: A Class Exercise in Ethics, Freedom of Speech, and Intellectual Property

A brief examination of the fashion world reveals a multitude of learning opportunities for the business law curriculum. Fashion Law, a niche legal practice that addresses the broad range of business law concerns facing the fashion industry, has only recently gained a more respected position within legal research, debate, and discourse. In 2010, Fordham University became the site for the launch of the Fashion Law Institute,1 which offers two master's degrees in fashion law, dozens of public programs, an LL.M, and the Fashion Law Pop-Up Clinic.2 The Fashion Law Institute is regarded as the epicenter of the still-growing fashion law movement3 that includes the Harvard Fashion Law Lab and the New York Law School Fashion Law Initiative.4

Fashion has been present in society for years;5 however, our perspective on fashion has changed.6 Technology has opened a global marketplace and allows consumers more avenues in which to admire and purchase items.7 Additionally, an increased interest and hyper-focus on celebrities and their fashion, as well as private lives, help to catapult the amount of advertisements for brands and styles.8 Finally, in the past decade, an increasing list of new designers has caused the industry as a whole to grow.9

The growth of fashion law practices,10 fashion law scholarship,11 and newsworthy fashion law events supports the argument that the fashion law industry is an interesting and relevant context for teaching legal studies topics. As noted by a stalwart in the Fashion Law field, “Corporate finance, employment law, supply chain regulation, sustainability, taxes and tariffs, advertising, consumer protection, and dress codes and civil rights—these and other legal issues are all integral parts of fashion law. . . . ”12 Therefore, the topic is suited for a case study that can address numerous topics covered in the business law course.

This article provides a class exercise based on the 2014 Fall Moschino “McDonald's” collection that combined fashion and fast food in a way that arguably evoked humor, shock, wonderment, and controversy. The Moschino collection presents legal and ethical considerations such as free speech, marginalization, intellectual property rights, and business ethics. The eighty-minute exercise is designed to prepare students for a variety of legal issues they will confront as business professionals. It can be introduced within an instructor's established business law curriculum to supplement the topics of intellectual property, free speech, and business ethics. Given the range of substantive law topics, there is flexibility to either assign the activity at the end of the course or introduce the factual background at the beginning of the course and reference it throughout the semester as the topics are introduced.

Part II of this article provides the factual background of the controversial 2014 Moschino collection. Part III analyzes the legal and ethical issues and describes the class activity. The article concludes in Part IV.

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate how a particular industry, in this case fashion, can encompass many facets of business law, including ethics, intellectual property, and freedom of speech considerations. It encourages students to be cognizant of the diversity of legal issues that can arise in any industry and provides students practice recognizing those issues.

The class exercise is based on actions by the Moschino fashion house that raise legal and ethical questions that were never resolved in a lawsuit. This example will allow students to contemplate how business decisions can play out in the public eye, while also deciding for themselves (without having the hindsight of a formalized court opinion) whether legal violations occurred.

Fashion and Fast Food is an exercise that allows students to apply multiple substantive law areas in one focused class exercise and to help demonstrate how classroom concepts interrelate in business. In this section, I will highlight the learning objectives for this exercise, as well as the overall activity structure, including in-depth discussion questions and teaching points for consideration.

The Moschino class exercise described in this article demonstrates the complexity of legal and ethical issues that can arise in the business world, even in business niches students have not previously considered. As the business world continues to evolve, students must understand that there are legal and ethical considerations in the most unique of situations, and the expectation of this class exercise is for students to critically assess and respond to these legal and ethical issues.