Miyuki Ebisawa loved fashion since she was a student at Keio Girls Senior High School and wouldn’t give up her passion, even after becoming a civil servant.

So, she pivoted to working as a fashion magazine editor, which she enjoyed, but she could not close her eyes to injustices in the fashion industry.

Today, Ebisawa, 45, is a lawyer specializing in dealing with legal problems in the apparel industry. 

She took a long and winding road to her profession.

Though Ebisawa wanted to attend a fashion-related vocational school after high school, her parents told her that “you should study at college first.”

When she was a junior at Keio University’s Faculty of Law, Ebisawa started devoting herself to working part time at a boutique. This made her “lag behind others in seeking a workplace to join after graduation, with the exam to become a public servant left as the only choice for me at the time.”

Ebisawa was interested in local autonomy because her family relocated across Japan due to her father’s job transfers. For that reason, she entered the now-abolished home affairs ministry in 1998.

After finishing a training program, she was temporarily assigned to the Gifu prefectural government office.

Although Gifu Prefecture had once been known as “the apparel kingdom,” the fabric wholesale district there was in serious decline. Ebisawa saw firsthand that “the fashion industry I love is facing such a grave crisis.”

Over the objections of people around her, Ebisawa ended her one-and-a-half year career as a civil servant to become a fashion magazine editor at Takarajimasha Inc.

Apparel-themed publications were selling well around that time, so she committed herself fully to her new job.

“Every day was like the day before school festivals,” Ebisawa recalled. “Working there was really fascinating and fulfilling.”

Meanwhile, Ebisawa saw people subjected to power and sexual harassment on many occasions at photo shoots and other locations.

“Photographers and stylists uttered insulting comments and resorted to violence against their assistants,” Ebisawa said. “I regret that I pretended to see nothing and did not speak up then.”

Learning about local apparel styling in Britain, Ebisawa began working as a freelance fashion editor upon her return to Japan. But her accumulated career experiences made her aware of many more challenges in the industry.

Verbal agreements are broadly considered as a well-established practice in the business. In addition, while compensation is paid to photographers and models for secondary use of images, stylists and hair artists are frequently not eligible for any future payments.

In 2012, Ebisawa thought that “the fashion industry has yet to be optimized from a legal perspective” and enrolled in a law school to become an attorney. She obtained the sunflower-designed pin for lawyers in 2017.

LEGAL TEAM FOR FASHION ISSUES

Mimura, Komatsu & Yamagata Law Firm, based in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, to which Ebisawa currently belongs, introduced a specialized team for legal problems linked to the fashion industry in January this year.

Working as part of such a team was one of the goals Ebisawa set when she started thinking of becoming a lawyer.

The newly established Fashion Law Unit is comprised of such officials as a senior lawyer knowledgeable about the apparel business and a former judge of the Intellectual Property High Court.

The team has about 50 companies as its regular clients. Individual cases involving a total of 100 corporations have been addressed by the unit so far.

The Fashion Law Unit is expected to move toward the introduction of an improved legal mechanism in connection with the rights and other problems in the industry as well.

“We will do our part as a team likewise in lobbying to reach out to public agencies,” Ebisawa said.

Not only harassment and rights issues but also problems arising from the rapid advancement of online services are rendering it increasingly urgent for the apparel community to conduct business in accordance with law.

As improper comments on social media lead to boycotts of companies’ products in some instances, Ebisawa is “overseeing the wording to be posted on social networking sites.”

“I work not only as a legal expert but also like a consultant,” she said.

Another notable issue in the fashion business is cultural appropriation these days, given that a succession of cases have been reported concerning the topic.

Putting wigs resembling a hairstyle for blacks on white models in a show came under fire. A French brand was criticized for improperly tracing the traditional clothing of indigenous people in Mexico.

“Cultural appropriation is an extremely difficult problem,” said Ebisawa. “It will be better for the fashion industry to set voluntary rules on, for example, how to respect different cultures and the way to express esteem.”