Transcript - Barbara Kolsun
Conversation with Barbara Kolsun, Director, The FAME Center
Joshua Williams: Retail Revolution, a unique podcast that features in-depth conversations with guest experts in omnichannel retailing, with myriad perspectives: technology, consumer engagement, data analytics, merchandising, and more. We pay special attention to current sociopolitical issues and challenges and their implications on fashion retail, as well as opportunities to innovate and rethink retail's future.
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Retail Revolution is produced by Joshua Williams and hosted by Christopher Lacy; both are Assistant Professors in the Fashion Management graduate program at Parsons School of Design.
Christopher Lacy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Retail Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Lacy and I'm very excited to bring to you a guest who is director of the Fame Center and is a leading fashion industry attorney and adjunct professor of fashion law at Cardozo Law, and co-editor of the seminal text on the subject, Fashion Law, a Guide for Designers, Fashion Executives, and Attorneys.
She is a consultant to fashion companies and has taught at NYU and Fordham Law schools. She also started the legal departments and was the first general counsel of Kate Spade, Stuart Weitzman, and Seven For All Mankind. And that is only a little of what Barbara Kolson has achieved throughout her career.
So, with pleasure, thank you so much, Barbara, for joining our show today.
Barbara Kolsun: Thank you for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here. I'm a big fan of yours and of Parsons.
Christopher Lacy: Aw thank you so much. It's great how we met; it's funny how things can be so serendipitous, I said yes to doing something and then that something led me to you.
Barbara Kolsun: That's networking at its best.
Christopher Lacy: It certainly is. So, tell us about you Barbara. Cause you've had such an amazing career and I can't not say this, but I love talking to you right now, especially, with so much that's happened politically out of fashion and to have you on today and to talk to you is just, really great politically with law and with women in law.
Barbara Kolsun: Thank you. Well, I, graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1971. I'm not afraid of talking about my age. And my goal at that point was going to be to go into the theater and, work as a professional, which I did for seven years. I was a professional singer and actress, in New York. Well into that, seven years, I realized that, I wasn't getting rich and famous. Some of my friends were, and I'm happy. for them, but that I needed something else. And honestly, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief was kind of my thought. Law school at the time was not expensive. It was about $4,000 a year. I applied to a bunch of law schools in New York and ended up choosing Cardozo, because it felt most like Sarah Lawrence in the sense that we had very, very good professors. We had a good friend who introduced me to people. So anyway, went to Cardoso starting in 1979. Hated it at first. I mean, hated law school at first, not Cardozo. And then I found my mentor, a guy named Barry Scheck who started the Innocence Project and I thought I was going to be a criminal lawyer. I was in the clinic with him. I had a job offer upon graduation at Legal Aid. I also had a job offer from the Second Circuit as a law clerk and I ended up taking that at Barry's suggestion to sort of bide myself a few years. And loved that and ended up not becoming a criminal lawyer for all sorts of personal reasons and, life, reasons. life was complicated at the time, somewhat to do with the AIDS crisis.
And, also financially, working in public service is a sacrifice. And I ended up in practice. [I] went to work for a small entertainment law firm. Then I went to work for a bigger law firm as a litigator. And then I ended up at a intellectual property boutique firm. And I was hired to, do Ralph Lauren's trademark enforcement work. Basically, Ralph Lauren was having issues with counterfeiting and with, infringement. And I was basically brought on because I had litigation experience and this is a lesson I always tell my students, which is starting at a small law firm, not necessarily doing what it is that you think you want to do, is always a great chance to get yourself into court, get experience. And this is what led to me ending up at this IP firm, doing Ralph Lauren work. That was the beginning of my career as an accidental fashion lawyer. I mean, I had no interest in fashion. I was never a shopper. I mean, certainly there were tailors at my family. My mother's family was Italian, so we had tailors. I had an aunt who made all my clothes. She could copy anything. and I don't think I ever bought a store-bought dress until I was in high school.
I was at Ralph Lauren for seven years, also representing other fashion designers. We represented Coach at the time. And, that was the beginning I left there after six years to go to a small firm that was essentially the in-house lawyer for Tommy Hilfiger, doing the same kind of work, spent a year there and then I had an opportunity to go what's called in-house. In other words, working directly for a designer and I was hired by Calvin Klein Jeans to be its second lawyer and handle all of its enforcement work. Calvin Klein Jeans was the most successful of the Calvin Klein licensees at that time. Those were the hot jeans and I was there for a year and then very, very busy with doing all of our enforcement work. Lots of problems with counterfeiting. And then the company was acquired, this has been a big theme in my career, acquisitions, by Warnaco. Warnaco was a huge apparel company, which owned swimwear brands and also owned Calvin Klein underwear, owned the license to Calvin Klein underwear and was the licensee for Calvin Klein Jeans. So, we were acquired by Warnaco. I survived about a year and then I lost my job as you do often in acquisitions. And one of the cases that I love to teach is the whole case involving, Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein, the designer. That's a very, very well-known case. After, kind of recuperating, I got hired through Ralph Lauren by one of its favorite licensees, which was West Point Stevens. The last of the home textile companies in the U.S., before all of that moved to China and Brazil and Turkey.
I replaced a general counsel there who was retiring. Actually, he just passed. I heard last night that he had passed in the last few months. He hired me with one interview. He was just perfectly happy to find somebody who could move into his spot. And I spent three wonderful years at Westpoint Stevens, really learning about the textile industry, learning about sourcing, learning about moving a company from, a domestic company to an international sourcing company. A sad story in the end. And we can talk about that when we talk about what with the pandemic has wrought, but ultimately all of that, we closed many, many factories all over the U.S. And I was just the lawyer, so I didn't have anything to do with those kinds of decisions, but it was sad to watch.
I ended up getting a job because of Westpoint Stevens with Kate Spade as the first general counsel. We were talking to the Kate Spade company about doing their home textile line and I offered to give them some free advice about their counterfeiting problem, which I had seen in Chinatown wandering around. And that conversation, another great life lesson, which is give free advice whenever possible, led to my getting hired by the Spades to be their first in-house lawyer. And, their first general counsel. I was had the happiest three years of my life there. Our office was down in Madison Park. We had just the most divine team, it was the original, Kate and Andy Spade and their two best friends building a brand, absolutely divine brand which really took off in the three years I was there.
I left there for more money. Sometimes we have to make those decisions in life. I got a call from one of my colleagues from the Calvin Klein Jeans day saying that another jeans company called Seven for all Mankind, which was the new hot brand, was looking for a general counsel. They were based in LA. Would I move to LA? I said, no, I will not move to LA. I ended up getting the job anyway, working out of the show room in New York and spent three years at Seven for all Mankind, until we were acquired by VF, a huge holding company that owns Wrangler and Lee and Northface and Kipling. And, at the time even more brands.
I lost my job there after about six months, as happens after acquisitions. And I picked up the phone and called the private equity company who had hired me, and they hired me to be the first lawyer for his general counsel at Stuart Weitzman, where I spent seven really interesting years. We had four owners in seven years. I didn't lose my job until the last owner, which was Coach, now Tapestry.
And during that period, I was already teaching by the way I had started teaching, I believe, oh gosh, early on my career. I was teaching at Fordham in the late eighties, but I started teaching more and more at Cardozo. I wrote a couple of books. The book that you mentioned in the intro, but three others after that including the case book that was just published by Carolina Press on fashion, business and law. It's called The Business and Law of Fashion and Retail.
Just to summarize, after I left Stuart Weitzman, I consulted with Sam Edelman, an old friend of mine for a few years with New York & Company. And also, with Weight Watchers, which was rebranding from Weight Watchers to WW and had hired Mindy Grossman from the fashion industry to kind of turn that around. And I got that job through my dear friend Michael Pelosi, who was the other lawyer at Warnaco when we were acquired. So, what goes around, comes around.
Now I am running the Fame program at Cardozo Law School, which is basically a program which provides training and development opportunities related to the representation of businesses driven by the creative process, from Fortune 500 companies to start ups.
The center, which is a affiliate of Cardozo's intellectual property and information law program, offers coursework, internships, clinics and symposiums featuring industry leaders, speakers like Clive Davis and Kenneth Cole and Stuart Weitzman and Sam Edelman, and the list goes on.
We have alumni that are pretty much in every company. I mean, in the fashion world, we've got an alum in just about every major fashion company. We've got six lawyers who make the Billboard Best Music lawyer list every year. And, lawyers at Sotheby's and Christie's and sports league. Sports is also part of the Fame package. I mean, tonight we've got Kasseem Dean with Swizz Beatz, who's going to be our first sort of celeb speaker of the academic year. And that's, what I do.
I teach, I'm a professor of practice, which is kind of a new beast based on the ABA, American Bar Associations, seeking more teachers who have worked in the industry. And I'm director of the Fame program. And, I teach fashion law the first semester. And second semester I teach something called the fashion law practicum, which is kind of a clinical type course with FIT's graduate program, master's program. We advise their capstone master's students, basically getting their start-ups off to a start.
So that is my career in a nutshell. Phew!
Christopher Lacy: Look, there's so much that I want to unpack there because, from two angles, one is your professional stance, but then there's the personal part of being able to kind of go with the flow in your career.
There is something that you mentioned about one of your roles and it regarded counterfeiting. And currently as well, a result of COVID... and actually we saw this happening in the fashion industry prior to COVID, is the speed at which shared economy is taking root. So, the upcycling, the, secondhand luxury, the resell market. And it is becoming increasingly popular and numbers are indicating that this is going to be something that becomes even more popular over the next six months to year, as a result of COVID. So, now that this is really becoming a thing, how can brands become more involved in this process to maintain control of the brand image, especially relative to counterfeits? Because now everything is being resold. I think, at the time you were dealing with counterfeits, it was just like someone was making a fake, flat out. But now it's kind of interesting. Right? I would say it's a little bit difficult to navigate these waters.
Barbara Kolsun: Oh, for sure. And I think you have to kind of separate companies like Rent the Runway, which is of course rental, and The Real Real, which as you probably know is involved in a lawsuit with Chanel because of its claim that it has the, ability to authenticate real Chanel versus fake Chanel. And as we well know with luxury brands, the only one who could really authenticate a Chanel bag is the person who manufactures it. I mean, if you look at who the witnesses are, when Chanel has a counterfeit trial, has sued a counterfeiter, it's usually not a salesperson or a marketing person. It's the production person who can authenticate. So, for a company like The Real Real to claim that they can authenticate product is probably, less than honest.
I mean counterfeiting when I started in business, back in the Ralph Lauren days, counterfeiters were in Chinatown, flea market owners, we kind of moved from suing street vendors; we kind of moved from suing those folks to working more with law enforcement, to third party defendants like flea market owners, like landlords. There's a wonderful lawyer, Heather McDonald, who did a lot of work suing the landlords in Chinatown, who would rent to one counterfeiter then evict that counterfeiter when in the midst of a lawsuit, but then rent to another counterfeiter the next day. So, we made a lot of progress with that.
And then, of course, the internet and China, and websites and people, it's, kind of like fake news, I mean, I certainly would never order a luxury product online. Certainly, luxury brands have to be very, very careful about their sales online and really enforcing and watching it. It's, almost an impossible task. And you're right, I mean, I think the pandemic has pushed more and more people to shop online. Amazon has had its issues with the sale of counterfeit goods and trying very hard to move into that luxury space. But how do you get the trust of an LVMH or a Chanel when you also are a platform that offers counterfeit. I just did a program last week at the law school about the 10-year anniversary of the Tiffany vs eBay lawsuit. And as you probably know, Tiffany was not successful in its lawsuit against eBay, because the court basically felt it's not eBay's responsibility to police it's site beyond following Tiffany and other brand owner's directions when they say, please take down that site because it's a fake. And the court felt that eBay had done enough with its Vero program, verify rights program, where, where brands can, in fact, instruct eBay to take down something. And Amazon has a similar program.
Alibaba has been a huge problem. I'm much more in agreement with the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the AAFA, which continues to put Alibaba on its list of troublesome, websites.
The problem is complicated. If it's going to get any better, brands have to spend a huge amount of money and resources, time, to enforce. brands, like LVMH, do an amazing job. But it's a big with company a lot of money. I think the challenge for smaller brands, and it's one of the things I really, really learned at Kate Spade, which was a, I don't know, less than $75 million brand when I worked for them is, joining forces with other brands in the, fight against counterfeiters. Cause I think that's the only way you can do it.
I said that and I can I'll say it now, which is that we’re competitors in the marketplace, but work compatriots in the fight against counterfeits.
Christopher Lacy: I want to ask you then, as we see these lawsuits that are happening. And just for someone like me, even for the listeners, of course, is what really constitutes infringement? And then what needs to be proven in a court of law? Because to your point, the LVMHs of the world, they have tons of people to back them up with these things, but what we're seeing is many new designers that are coming out, and then you have large companies that are actually kind of copying what they're doing. Right. And so. how does all this fall out? What is infringement for everyone and how do you need to prove that in a court of law?
Barbara Kolsun: Well, the first thing we have to realize that there's a difference between infringement and counterfeiting. I mean, counterfeit is flat out copying, it's substantially identical. You make a tee shirt that says Calvin Klein on it, and you sell it in Chinatown. That's counterfeiting. You're pretending to be, claiming to be Calvin Klein. So, let's put that to one side. I think we all agree that is bad. That's stealing.
In the United States, protection of fashion and is very, very low. That's something we really have to remember. We do not have a law like Europe does that protects designs. And we have not been successful in making that happen. Why? It's a cultural thing. This is a market economy. France, Italy, you think about where do all the great designers come from? Gucci, Prada, LVMH. I mean the list goes on. These are European-based, and you will often see a result, something that you can enforce in Europe that you cannot enforce in the U.S. So, copyright law protects basically, in the fashion world, just jewelry, like David Yurman, who, files, copyright gets registrations for his jewelry. Certain fabric, Pucci prints, think something like that. And honestly, not much else. The trademark of course, is the source. I mean, obviously trademark is about consumer protection, source identification. And then design patent and utility patent protects certain aspects. Maybe a particular kind of a class, or Gore-Tex, is protected by patent, that kind of thing.
Bottom line is we don't really protect design in this country. There's a recent Supreme Court case, the varsity case, which involves cheerleader uniforms, which is kind of at this point, the outer limit of protection in the U.S.
When a young designer is copied, if a well-known designer copies a young designer, more junior designers, there's not necessarily a lot that the junior designer can necessarily do, and that's just the way it is here. And I think many of my colleagues, including me to some extent, think that that's okay. And, litigation is expensive. Companies certainly settle with each other. but, it's a quagmire and it's, it's probably not going to the change. And I think we just have to accept that. Now I'm talking about, the cut of a garment, the Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress, not protected by trademark or copyright, or even patent or design patent.
On the other hand, the red sole on the Louboutin shoe, is a registered trademark. And that case, the Louboutin vs. St Laurent case was pretty much, both sides won Louboutin can continue to hold that trademark on that red sole. The court limited the trademark to, the soul is red, but the rest of the shoe has to be a contrast in color. So, what makes the Louboutin shoe, the Louboutin shoe, when you see a person walking down the street and you see the red sole and what do you think source equals Mr. Louboutin. Whereas, the Yves St. Laurent shoe involved in that case was all red, completely multicolored red. And the court said that that did not infringe the Louboutin shoe.
So, I'm teaching my fourth class on this very issue today and I taught two on copyright and we've got one on design patent coming up. So, these are very complicated questions. And it's what keeps us lawyers employed.
Christopher Lacy: Right. Right. And it's actually been going since 2019 is Off White having difficulty securing a trademark for a product bag. And I think part of the issue with them securing this trademark is the actual use of quotations.
Barbara Kolsun: Yeah.
Christopher Lacy: And, I'm not sure how much you about this, but from a court's perspective, why is this difficult to give them a trademark on quotation, product bag to use for items?
Barbara Kolson: I mean, I've just been teaching an old case involving Ann Taylor copying a Coach bag. If you think way back, to the eighties, the Coach bags of us women bought for our first jobs. I mean, it's pretty much an identical copy of the bag. It's got to do with monopoly in a way. I mean, I think courts do not want anybody to, and this is in the U.S. Again, to be able to monopolize something that the whole world should have access to. And I'm not, I'm not that familiar with the Off White case, but, there's another case involving Vuitton. And Louis Vuitton is so aggressive in its lawsuits. And for most of us, that's a good thing because they are their cases kind of set the boundaries of what we can and can't do. I mean, they lost a case, which is similar to this, called my other bag a company, made a bag and it says, "my other bag." And, on the back of it is the Vuitton toile pattern, and on the front, it says "my other bag." And it's a joke. It's kind of a parody. And a lot of case law has to do with that.
But again, I think it's really got to do with monopoly. And not nobody should have like the monopoly of the color red. and the Louboutin case, at the trial court level, almost did away with color. The judge basically said, judge Marrero, in that case, that nobody should have the monopoly of the color red. And think about the Tiffany blue box or, there are certainly colors that are protected by trademark.
But courts are always drawing the lines, drawing the lines. And, it's these big companies that have the money to litigate, to hire really, really smart lawyers to just kind of push that boundary. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't; depends on the judge.
Christopher Lacy: I want to ask you about and this is an interesting statistic that I saw, which because we're talking about trademarks, we're talking about patents, that women are far less likely to receive a patent than men are. And I was like, wow, that's, that's kind of a crazy number, because you don't really think about it. Now, one of the reasons is because, more often than not, women have not been able to have as much access to inventing over the years. I mean, obviously we see that that's changing now, but as far as them applying for patents, they're having quite a bit of difficulty getting them. So, are there organizations that are out there that can help businesswomen and women who are inventors to support them and guide them in this quest to get a patent and the trademark?
Barbara Kolsun: It's interesting because, it's not just women, it's m And, we have a program, it's funny you should bring this up, because we at Cardozo Law School; my colleague Erin Wright is running a program looking at exactly this issue. It's a Google grant, to examine why more women and minorities are not applying for and obtaining patents, and how we can fix this. And I know that Erin Wright has interviewed many, many women patent lawyers. And, I mean, I can tell you from my own experience, when I went to work at Amster Rothstein back in my very first fashion law experience though, this was the firm that represented Ralph Lauren. It was a patent firm. And it was, it was all men. I mean, I was hired because we needed a litigator to deal with the Ralph Lauren issues, which were trademark and copyright, not patents. So, I was hired by a patent firm to do what used to be called soft IP, trademark and copyright. With patent being hard IP, I guess, hard science. Patent lawyers have to have a degree in engineering or some science and have to take a special bar. And, I suspect that inventors, like those who invent and put together products that could be subject to patents are people with some kind of technical expertise. On the other hand, in the fashion world, I mean, there are a lot of design patents for, various aspects of a shoe, of a handbag, a class, a type of dye for jeans, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And I think it's the, school's like Parsons, like FIT, like Pratt, that really need to start teaching, this is one of the things we've been working on with Parsons by the way, is some kind of a course, a design course where we're teaching your students along with ours, the kind of basics of these things, and maybe that kind of thing would make a young designer from Parsons say, wait a minute, this would be, maybe this is a good subject for a patent. And what used to happen in the old days is then you would pick up the phone and call a male patent lawyer. That's changing to some degree. I think it really kind of falls into the bigger picture. Why are there only three women on the United States Supreme court two right now, out of nine? Why are there so few women on boards of directors? I mean, it really gets into a much bigger, bigger issue about women in those kinds of jobs. But I think you raise a really good point. And I think it's something that we can work on together, certainly at Cardozo. I, and, and. and I will definitely keep you up to date on the Google project, in terms of what progress we've made in fixing this problem.
Christopher Lacy: That's fantastic. thank you. And for me to not have even been aware of the disparity of women, and to your point women of color, especially. How less likely they are to get patents. And the idea is really, if you can become an entrepreneur in the U.S., That's always kind of been a focus, I think if we were to talk about American dreams, it's kind of this, the old way of it was to be able to own a home, or whatever that looks like. But the ability also work for yourself and to create, is also really important. And I think when you were in school or at this level, or even just looking at your life and you're like, I want to change some things up. There's some things I want to do on my own, and become an entrepreneur, there are certain things that you just don't know that are out there that you kind of need to navigate through.
Because you've worked with startups, and it's so important, for our entrepreneurs that are listening and who are looking at the fashion retail industry, whether they're a designer, whatever it is they're thinking of as an entrepreneur, what advice do you have for them, based on what you've seen across your career trajectory and what you're learning and teaching your students? What advice would you have for those new entrepreneurs in the fashion retail industry?
Barbara Kolsun: Well, certainly networking; listening to as many podcasts like this. There's so much available on Zoom now. I mean the positive, if one can dig up anything positive about this awful six months, it's that there's so much online free. I mean, our Fame program at Cardozo, join our mailing list. We don't charge for any of our events. We've got something coming up in October called The Future of Fashion. We're going to be hearing from somebody in the private equity world. We're going to be hearing from the former head of Neiman Marcus.
There are wonderful things to read. Julie blog, The Fashion Law. Having a general sense of the law, not jumping into things too quickly. I mean, one thing we talk about in our courses, for young designers who want to name the company after them; learn about the problems Joseph Abboud and Gucci had with using their names after those names were sold. Financing, fashion finance, and know how to write a business plan. I mean, that is so important. Really understand what a business plan is. Again, there's so much out there for free. Educate yourself. I think that this pandemic and post pandemic world is going to be filled with entrepreneurs. I mean, I call my lawsuit against the pandemic lawyers because who knows how many of them are going to have the traditional jobs that were available before all of this. I think this is going to be a lot more or going to have to jump into starting their own businesses, and not relying on, the old business model. So, education, networking would be my two best pieces of advice.
Christopher Lacy: Awesome. Great pieces of advice, right? I think a lot of times we kind of forget the importance of truly networking and being active with networking and accessing free information. And what's great about the digital age is that there is information out there, if you can find it.
I feel like I have to ask you about this, because you're a lawyer and we've talked about both of these companies. And I need to know what your thoughts are on the current legal battle between Tiffany & Co and LVMH.
Barbara Kolsun: Well, I love both of those companies. I just love them. They're just the gold standard. I think that the acquisition, by LVMH of Tiffany, was kind of a big surprise to everyone. I think the pandemic has thrown a monkey wrench into many deals. This isn't the only one. I mean, this is certainly the most high profile one. But look what happened with Victoria's Secret. I mean, there are other deals that have fallen through. Look, these are two very, very successful companies. I honestly don't have an opinion on either side. I've read about the rumor that somehow the French government had something to do with this. I don't know. I actually, I have a house in France, and I'm fascinated by all things French, but I don't know what truth there is to that. Not, living there. We'll see, I always hate litigation and the lawyers on both sides, but we're all sensitive enough not to ask questions that we know we're not allowed to ask certainly when something's in the midst of a litigation. But I hope it's over soon and everybody can kind of get back to business. Litigation is never pleasant. And lawyers for both companies have certainly sat around tables that I've been around and are very harmonious and get along well. But this is life. And we often have to take up battles that our businesspeople want to take up kind of bite our tongues and do what we have to do.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. Litigation is not fun and it's very expensive. So, if you could let our listeners know how they can keep up to what's going on in your world. I feel like you have a lot that's happening that we could keep up to date on. So, how can they stay abreast of Barbara Kolson?
Barbara Kolsun: Oh, well. First, I would say join our mailing list. Go onto the Cardozo Law School, C A R D O Z O law school website and click onto the Fame program. There's at least two programs every week. Last week we had a program on comedy and the law. We had one on, as I said, the 10th anniversary of Tiffany vs eBay, which was really interesting and, and very much thought provoking in terms of the earlier questions you had asked about, counterfeiting and infringement and Amazon, and what we have to kind of think about in terms of, the future.
My book I co-edited is called Business and Law of Fashion and Retail. It just came out. It was published by Carolina Academic Press. It's very easy to read, even though it's a law school case book. We tried to make it more of a handbook, as well as a case book, but it covers everything. I have to tell you. I'm learning, with my students, even though I've been teaching this material for years.
Read Women's Wear Daily. Women's Wear Daily is the Bible, certainly in the fashion world. It does give you a very good update on what's going on in the industry the bankruptcies, which of course are voluminous, the closing of stores, how the industry is going to kind of readjust itself once we get a vaccine. And, also of course, The Wall Street Journal. I say to my students all the time, know what's going on in the world. If you say you're not interested in politics, so much of politics colors our business. I mean the trade war with China; this is enormous. Everything you're wearing, I’m talking to you on my, iPhone. This is all made in China. I mean, a trade war with China is a serious thing. The #MeToo movement, in addition to Harvey Weinstein, many, many, I mean, the head of Tapestry recently, left because of an issue, in that world. Black Lives Matter, incredibly important. The George Floyd murder. I mean, it just goes on and on the overlap. The election, the Supreme Court, the courts. Who decides these issues? Everything we've been talking about today is decided in Federal Court. In New York, certainly, we have the most sophisticated judges in the Southern district, in Eastern district of New York, in the second circuit who really understand our industries. And then the spillover, fashion and entertainment, fashion and technology, sustainability. Fashion has everything to do with, with, saving our planet where the biggest polluter on earth. There's nothing in the news that doesn't affect our industry.
So, these are the kinds of things that I think about, and I have a platform now at Cardoza with our programming. I did a program on the Rosenbergs because so few of my students knew where the Rosenbergs were. And Roy Cohen, I'm doing and new documentary on him.
Christopher Lacy: We're going to have to have you back again so that we can deep dive into some of the other points that you brought up and other things that I want to talk to you about.
Thank you so much for being on the show today, Barbara. We appreciate it. And good luck with everything you have going on in the future.
Barbara Kolsun: Thank you. And it was a pleasure to meet you; thanks, so much for having me. I loved it. What a great conversation.
Christopher Lacy: Thank you. Take care, Barbara.
Barbara Kolsun: Bye, bye.
Joshua Williams: Thank you for listening to this episode of Retail Revolution. A very special thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible. If you'd like to support the work we're doing, please visit our show page at RetailRevolutionPodcast.com and click on the donate link.
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