Douglas Hand is one of the pre-eminent fashion lawyers in the country. He has been featured and profiled in numerous media outlets and publications including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, the American Bar Association Journal, Women’s Wear Daily and The Business of Fashion.
Douglas is an adjunct professor of Fashion Law at both NYU School of Law (where he also has served on the Fashion & Luxury Council) and Cardozo School of Law (where he also sits on the Board of Advisors for the Fashion, Arts, Media and Entertainment (FAME)Law Center). His writing and commentary on the fashion industry are prolific with Carolina Press publishing his casebook The Law and Business of Fashion and Retail in 2020 with a Second Edition published in 2025 and the American Bar Association publishing his book The Laws of Style: Sartorial Excellence for the Professional Gentleman in 2018. Douglas maintains a regular column on fashion law impacting the menswear industry in the publication MR Magazine as well as a regular podcast interviewing fashion industry insiders called The Laws of Style.
He is the Chair of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Foundation Board of Directors, a founding Board member of Closely Crafted (a non-profit dedicated to preserving craft in the American fashion industry), a member of the Business Advisory Committee of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a mentor to RAISEfashion member BIPOC-owned brands and a Board member of Fashion Group International (FGI).
Douglas has been on numerous other advisory boards in the fashion industry as well a charitable institutions including as Vice-Chair of the Board of Goodwill NYNJ, Secretary of the Board of the New York based experimental art non-profit The Kitchen and Board member of Fashion Group International. A former NCAA athlete in three sports, he has also been a contributor and speaker at conferences on the sports and entertainment sector and its intersection with the business of fashion.
He began his legal career in the New York and Paris offices of Shearman & Sterling, representing domestic and international clients in public and private M&A transactions.
.png)
.png)
