Julie Zerbo was still a student when she launched The Fashion Law, one of the first blogs dedicated to examining the business and culture of the fashion industry through a legal lens. In the four years since, it’s grown into a trusted resource with a dedicated readership — not uncommon to see New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman sharing its posts — and Zerbo has become a go-to expert for publications working stories with a legal angle. We chatted with Zerbo about fashion and the Federal Trade Commission, the real problems with counterfeit goods, and how fast fashion brands can start fixing their labor issues today.

You started The Fashion Law about four years ago — after the fashion blog had peaked and bloggers were shifting towards Instagram and other social media platforms. So: why did you start a blog?

I started it as a resource, as kind of an academic project. I really never thought of it as a blog. I was in law school and I was interested in fashion law but I didn’t find many sites that were writing about it in a way that was inspiring to me, especially because I really was relying on the web to supplement the courses I was taking, which were just black letter law courses as opposed to focused fashion law courses.

Have you noticed, since you started it, that there’s more out there on fashion law for people who are interested?

Definitely. It’s really, really picked up steam, this little niche area of law. There are courses in law schools now, full programs that students can enrol in. I’ve also noticed fashion law has become a popular topic to write about. The big fashion sites publish law-related articles pretty regularly, so there’s definitely a lot of interest around it.

Why do you think that might be?

Fashion has always been a business, but I think that it’s now being approached more as a business as opposed to as an art. The logistics and the business workings of fashion brands are of particular interest to people, and the law obviously plays an integral part in the growing and operating a fashion business.

I also think there’s an evolving fashion readership. They don’t just want to look at pictures, whether they’re personal style or runway images. They want to read something in-depth that otherwise may not have been obvious. They really are searching for more than just what so-and-so is wearing or the pictures from the latest Gucci show.

You just wrote a really good, in-depth piece on FTC violations at some of the top-tier fashion publications.

I published that on the heels of the three big resort shows: Chanel’s in Cuba, Louis Vuitton’s in Rio de Janeiro, and Dior’s in London. There’s a wide-spread practice of houses flying editors to these shows, paying to put them up in hotels, organizing site-seeing trips and giving them gifts. The law requires that if anyone is given some form of compensation, whether it’s a check, a Chanel bag, or a free trip, they have to disclose that in connection with whatever they publish. My piece looked at two different aspects. First, it looked at the journalistic integrity aspect of not disclosing that Chanel flew so-and-so’s editors to the show and how that might affect their reviews. Then there’s the issue of potential legal violations when an editor takes one of these trips and writes a feature or even post a picture on Instagram without disclosing that Chanel made the trip possible.

When it comes to fashion media, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, and to an extent that’s fine, but I think that when federal law comes into play there are things that need to be talked about, and in a lot of these instances the solutions are very, very simple. I’m not telling anyone not to take the free trip — take the free trip! — but it really is necessary to fully disclose that you took the free trip. It’s not just about upholding the law, it’s also about informing the consumer and the average reader.

Do you think the laws as they exist are adequate to cover these disclosures? Or is this as case of media evolving quicker than the law can keep up with?

I think there’s blame to be placed on both sides. The Federal Trade Commission Act hasn’t changed in 100 years. The language of the act is still the same. In one way, that’s great — the language is broad enough to apply to practices today. The FTC has issued guidelines saying, “The rules are still the same, Truth In Advertising laws are still the same, but this is how they apply to social media.” In writing my article, I didn’t find myself stretching or grasping for straws. The law very clearly applies to all of these instances. It’s just that the introduction of social media and native advertising and things like that, it complicates things, and perhaps these publications don’t know how to apply the law, but it’s not that the law isn’t there. I think, if anything, it’s that the FTC isn’t uniformly upholding the law, and so that’s confusing for people.

Another major issue that fashion law contends with is counterfeiting. Could you tell me — because I’ve seen varying reports on this — how big a problem is counterfeiting really? And which kind of labels are getting hit the hardest by it?

How big of a problem is it depends on what angle we view it from. In terms of monetary losses, it’s huge. There’s also the element of the labor conditions for the people that are making counterfeit good, and where the proceeds of these counterfeit sales go.

While Jack Ma of Alibaba says, “Most counterfeits are made in the same factories as the real thing,” that’s extremely debatable and I don’t think that we can go by his word on that, if only because Alibaba brings in so much money from the sale of counterfeits. That’s a big misconception that he’s been putting out there that I have to absolutely mention. The manufacture of counterfeits has been consistently tied to forced labor and slave labor. The revenue brought in from the sale of counterfeits has consistently been tied to organized crime.

Another aspect that’s problematic for brands — and we’ve seen this very, very clearly with Louis Vuitton in the past decade — is if the market is saturated with logo-covered goods, whether they’re real or fake, brands experience significant negative side effects from that. Part of what high fashion is based on is this idea of exclusivity. When you’re on the train and everyone has a Louis Vuitton Neverfull bag, no one’s going to want to go out a buy that, and so counterfeits dilute the original brand image. They impair the distinctiveness and the exclusivity that brands really rely on, especially because they’re not charging $500 for a bag, they’re charging $3,000 for a bag. If you’re going to spend that much, you don’t want a bag that absolutely everybody else has.

When people imply that there aren’t negative side effects associated with counterfeits because of the argument that anyone who could buy a real Chanel bag wouldn’t buy a fake one, I don’t think they’re looking at the whole picture. There’s a reason that brands spend such a significant part of their revenues each year on fighting infringements and counterfeits. Big houses like Chanel have been building up their trademark for over 100 years. The esteem that’s associated with it comes from the policing of that trademark and not letting it become too saturated.

Are you aware of any tactics that these brands are using to fight counterfeiting that seem like they’ll be really effective?

A good one is innovating in terms of design. The more complex the bag is, the more difficult it is and more expensive it is for counterfeit manufacturers to replicate in an accurate way.

There’ve been some additional laws passed in the United States. There’s one called Operation In Our Site that basically allows parties to get a court order to disgorge the defendants of profits that they make in connection with the sale of counterfeit goods. It allows courts to take money out of the bank accounts and out of the Paypal accounts of the defendants. This was pretty effective early on until the counterfeiters realized what was happening and would withdraw money extremely quickly.

Right. So it’s a real game of cat and mouse.

It is. In a way, they’re like fast fashion retailers. They’re always one step ahead and they really good at forecasting what’s to come and responding.

Fast fashion is part of your regular beat at The Fashion Law. I think at this point, anyone who’s interested in learning about the negatives of fast fashion, that information is out there. It’s pretty well understands that that clothing is not necessarily going to be made in safe conditions, that the people making it aren’t necessarily going to be treated well, that the clothes are having a really deleterious effect on the environment. What I don’t see are a lot of actionable suggestions as to what we can do as an industry to start making fashion more sustainable and humane. If you could list two or three things that the industry should be doing starting tomorrow, what would they be?

Consumers aren’t going to stop shopping cheap fashion. Fast fashion isn’t going to go away, and so I think that as consumers, as an industry, we really need to put pressure on the big retailers — the H&M’s, the Forever21s, the Nasty Gals — to implement codes of ethics and standards in terms of manufacturing in their factories, in their subcontractors’ factories, and in their subcontractors’ subcontractors’ factories, and to be more transparent. I think that’s where solutions will come from.

It’s not easy. These companies will obviously fight that, but for me, that’s where it has to start. It’s not realistic to ask people to stop shopping fast fashion, and the women and children making these clothes do not want to stop making them. That’s their income. They just want to be able to work in better conditions, and so that’s something that’s absolutely within brands’ power.

Something else that we can do in the very near future is to make ethically-made, ethically-sourced clothing more accessible and more convenient for consumers. There are a lot of alternatives but they’re simply not as convenient as an H&M or a Forever21 and I think that’s something that stands in the way of making a meaningful shift towards more responsible consumption. There really are quite a few websites and brands that are providing affordable clothing that’s made ethically, so I think promoting those sites is important.

The last time we saw each other, we both expressed, if I’m remembering this right, some fatigue with covering the fashion industry. Do you think we’ve changed, or has the industry? Have designs become less exciting?

It’s really funny you say this. I was just thinking about this today and how I’ve only looked at a few of the menswear collections in Europe. I used to look at every single collection. The clothes feel so much less special than they used to. I think we’ve lost this delicate balance of art and commerce and for me it’s very obvious. Creating desirable garments and accessories that people want to save up to buy and wear for many seasons has taken a backseat to creating social media moments and hype around a collection. In place of exciting design like a Raf Simons Spring/Summer 2003 type of collection that people still talk about, houses are filling their front rows with celebrities. They’re having celebrities front their ad campaigns. They’re introducing seasonless collections and the See Now, Buy Now format, which in theory make sense, but instead of focusing on the clothes themselves we’re getting lost in these logistical concerns and forgetting that at the end the day, if you make clothes that people want to buy, they’re going to buy them. I really do believe that if we go back to the drawing board and focus on the garments themselves as opposed to focusing on whether or not we can get Kendall Jenner to tweet a picture in a dress, that’s a really good starting point.

Q&A by Adam Wray, Curator of FashionREDEF. You can follow Adam on REDEF and Twitter (@FashionREDEF, @Terminal_avenue), or reach him at adam.wray@redefgroup.com