Fashion companies, as business entities, have always been faced with balancing technological and operational necessities with creative and imaginative artistry. Today, this challenge is even more difficult to manage, as the industry’s traditional modes of operation (e.g. a multitude of physical retail locations, seasonally driven creation & distribution of products, near total dependency on foreign production, and the producer’s sense of fashion trend entitlement) has given way to omnichannel retailing, merchandise “drops” and smaller collections, reimagining production systems (aka “Supply Chains”)and the ascendency of the consumer as the controlling factor in confirming fashion trends and determining market outcomes, to name just a few of the disruptive changes. This has been underscored by the industry struggling to contain its role as a major source of global pollution, and global warming. The ESG/CSR Sustainability challenge has intensified Fashion’s need to manage these disruptive changes and incorporate new operational modes while, in the same space and time, embracing the new digital ways of thinking about business and fashion, including the impact of the Metaverse, NFT’s, Blockchain and virtual try-on processes and platforms. This course and this class is charged with finding new, untried but business-driven, solutions to these challenges placed within the Sustainability context.
This two-credit course is about key legal aspects of the entertainment industry. Entertainment law is not a separate legal discipline. There is really no such thing as entertainment law. Instead, it lies at the intersection of several areas of law and applies those disciplines to the diverse entertainment industry of products and services. The course will involve a foundational coverage of the following areas: contract, advertising, protection of ideas by contract, copyright and trademark (including the concepts of parody and fair use), rights of publicity and privacy, defamation, and artist representation. This course should prepare you to analyze a wide variety of entertainment law issues at a general level. Entertainment law does not tend towards an orderly system because it lacks overriding organizational principles that would tie together its myriad facets. As such, this course will appear to lack a logical outline in its progression and instead, will examine this corner of law in separate pieces, which will cover doctrine, analytical problem-solving, practical skills related to law (e.g., analytical writing, reasoning skills, argument structure, etc.), and the particular contexts in which issues arise in the entertainment industry. Dealing with more narrow topics, such as constitutional concerns or union representation, or obtaining a much deeper knowledge of specific topics discussed in class, will require additional, specialized study. This class also helps students further develop their reasoning, communication, and listening skills.
This course explores how films are vehicles for understanding business. In doing so, it also explores some key issues facing the business community. For example, the class examines the impact of business on society, the ethical obligations of firms, the power and role of firms as social organizations, the impact of the globalization of business and how different cultures come together in global firms. To better understand these topics, students view important films covering these issues, which are paired with scholarly or popular works focused on the same issues.
A site for IMA NY Students to find equivalent courses outside of IMA NY
For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, there is a new program structure that affects the categorization of courses on this site:
Any class in any IMA major elective category (ie "Art & Design") refers to the IMA program structure previous to those entering in Fall 2022. If you are in the class of 2026 (most entering Fall 2022 or later), any course in an IMA elective category are generic IMA electives in the new structure.