'Nuts and Bolts' Guide provides perfect model for fashion success
15 Sep 2010
Following the success of the first The Look and The Law guide about setting up creative businesses, law firm Davenport Lyons has once again teamed up with Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden to give easy to understand vital legal guidance to up-and-coming British fashion designers to help them expand their businesses.
In his foreword to the guide, John Galliano, Honorary Chairperson for Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden 2010, said: “If you have determination, drive, enough talent and wit, anything is possible if you want it enough. Today with the right mentors and daring you can push fashion to an extreme and exciting future.”
As being business savvy is an increasingly important part of a young designer’s artillery, The Look & The Law 2 draws on the vast industry experience of some of the most prestigious names in fashion including John Galliano; Sir Stuart Rose, CEO of Marks & Spencer; Joan Burstein, founder of Brown and Georgina Wier, Founder of La Louvre; combining the emphasis on creativity and ambition with hard-headed practical legal advice from Davenport Lyons.
The free guide, The Look and The Law 2, builds on the first edition about setting up a business and focuses on expanding your business. Providing a much more global outlook, the 2010 edition includes tips for export success, advice on managing the ethical complications of outsourcing and guidance on maximising sustainability. It also contains a précis of key legal elements to know when entering new markets. This new focus allows aspiring designers to keep pace with the paradigm shift that their industry is undergoing in the current climate.
Practical legal guidance to help the designers of tomorrow successfully handle some of the unpredictable, and potentially career-threatening, obstacles they may encounter on the way to the top is provided by a team of lawyers from Davenport Lyons, led by Adam Glass, experts in the legal issues surrounding the fashion world. They provide a ‘one stop’ checklist of possible problems which designers should consider and also more in-depth analysis of the issues they are likely to encounter.
As part of their prize the winner of Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden 2010, the original platform for discovering, nurturing and sustaining cutting edge design talent across the UK, will receive legal support from the experts at Davenport Lyons.
Adam Glass, Davenport Lyons Partner, added: “It is great to see Britain continuing to produce the very cream of young fashion designers, but it is important that the new talent in the industry keeps its feet on the ground and recognises that fashion is a tough business, and one where unexpected legal problems can crop up very quickly. At Davenport Lyons we are pleased to be able once again to highlight the less glamorous but highly important aspects of the business, such as protecting intellectual property, to which young designers may give little initial thought as they struggle to make a name for themselves.
Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden is a great vehicle to reveal and promote new talent and we are proud to continue our partnership to produce the new ‘The Look & The Law 2’. Leading the way in rights protection, as well as providing important commercial advice to creative sectors across the board, has given the team at Davenport Lyons unrivalled insight into supporting our nation’s artistic talent by protecting the ideas and work it produces.”
Colin McDowell, Founder and Creative Director of Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden said of the collaboration “Everyone at Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden is delighted that our ground-breaking self help book for young designers, The Look and The Law, has gone into it's second edition with completely new contents, exploring further areas that are essential for the successful running of a fashion business. I have been told in various places around the world that this book is used by fashion professionals as well as by lecturers in fashion colleges as an essential and reliable guide to a complex business, and I am not surprised. It is clear, accessible in the information it gives - and a remarkably easy and engaging read. For all of this we have to thank our legal partner Davenport Lyons, whose idea it was, and whose dedicated team headed by Adam Glass, are responsible for the writing, fact-checking and production of The Look and The Law 2.”
John Galliano with his three finalists (L-R) Jade Kang, Alice Palmer and Corrie Nielsen. Credit Nicolas Harvey.
The Look and the Law 2 is available for free from 18th September from fashion@davenportlyons.com in print as well as online from 23rd September at www.davenportlyons.com/publications/electronic-booklets.
