Veronique Pouillard-Maliks
Associate Professor in the History of Modern Europe
Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History
University of Oslo
Véronique Pouillard Maliks is a specialist on the business-cultural history of fashion and of advertising in Paris, Brussels, and New York. She has published three books—La publicité en Belgique, 1850-1975. Des courtiers aux agences internationales (2005); C’est du belge. Dit is Belgisch. The History of Advertising in Belgium (2004); and Hirsch & Cie, Bruxelles, 1869-1962 (2000)—and has contributed articles on fashion, public relations, and marketing to several peer-reviewed journals, including Business History Review, Revue du Nord, and Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps Présent. Besides her post in Oslo, Pouillard Maliks is affiliated with the European Institute at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and with the Institut d‘Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris. As part of The Enterprise of Culture, Pouillard Maliks is studying transatlantic relations in the fashion business for the cases of Paris and New York after World War II, examining the paths taken by the European fashion business, in reference to the scholarship on Americanization.
Abstract
The New-York Paris fashion nexus and the criminalization of fashion piracy. The Milton affair, 1955-1962.
Until today, the protection of fashion creativity and innovation is substantially different on both sides of the Atlantic. This has resulted in difficulties for fashion innovators and for makers of authorized copies when trying to protect their investment in design. During the first half of the 20th century, Paris remained the center for creativity in women’s fashion design, while New York’s garment industry largely capitalized on copying French design. In the postwar period, the Milton case occupies a central place in the battle waged by Paris fashion industrialists against American piracy.
This talk considers the Milton affair, a case that took place between 1955 and 1962. A group of French couturiers counting Christian Dior, Jacques Fath, Jeanne Lanvin and Jean Patou, represented by American attorneys Cleary, Gottlieb, Friendly, and Hamilton, filed a lawsuit in New York against Frederic L. Milton, an American entrepreneur specialized in making and selling sketches of Paris fashions as a business service. Paris couturiers considered the type of venture pursued by Milton as disloyal, although the status of his work was ambiguous on the US markets. The case underwent successive appeals, and case law shows well the challenges at work in an industry that occupies a complex status between high and low authorship. This talk builds upon the case law of the Milton affair, the business records of plaintiffs and defendants, and the archives of professional associations on both sides of the Atlantic.