Understanding the Role of “the City” in Developing Complex Regulatory Frameworks

This paper considers the relationship between the legal regulation of haute couture in Europe and the importance of “the city” as the locus of complex cultural, legal, and geographical forces. Haute couture and its legal framework are used as a case study to investigate how local dynamics – in this case, focusing on the role of the city – can shape the national and international legal responses to a cultural phenomenon, as well as provide a more complete understanding of how culturally significant practices acquire such an enduring meaningfulness in society. Connecting the role of ‘the city’ and legal regulation is particularly interesting through the lens of haute couture because while cities are frequent hosts to artistic or cultural movements, haute couture resulted in an elaborate system of strict regulation that extends beyond the ordinary intellectual property toolbox. This framework has a broader function than national intellectual property law because it not only reflects the legal dynamic of a particular industry, but the cultural and artistic practices of a specific, and particularly localised in this case, city. Haute couture is a demonstration of the complex relationship between local, national, and international modalities of law-making. Haute couture emerged as a niche, city-specific, cultural development yet it resulted in a national framework of regulation that reinforced the centralisation of Paris in haute couture, building and further supporting localisation and sub-localisation in the context of the dense network of fashion houses, ateliers, and schools.