Understanding luxury to better defend it
Some callings emerge early, with an almost instinctive clarity. Aurélie Buisson's is one of them.
At eight years old, she already knew she would become a lawyer. Defending, representing, giving voice to others: a thread that would run through her entire life.
When Aurélie joined Sup de Luxe in 2003, her plan was already clear. After a Master's in intellectual property, she wanted to deeply understand how the luxury industry works in order to best support the people within it. Her goal was precise: to become a lawyer specializing in luxury.
Sup de Luxe became a genuine strategic asset. At a time when training programs were still highly siloed by discipline, the school offered a unique cross-sector approach blending marketing, communication, finance, and law, a full immersion into the realities of the houses, creators, and brands she would go on to support throughout her career.
That year was particularly intense. Aurélie balanced the Paris Bar school with her studies at Sup de Luxe, a demanding pace that made her the only one in her class to complete the program without an internship, for lack of time.
But that same year also brought a defining moment.
At a guest speaker's request, she improvised a talk to her class on counterfeiting and intellectual property issues, with no preparation and no notes. An unplanned exercise that turned into a spark.
A few months later, she began teaching at Sup de Luxe.
For more than twenty years, she has shared her expertise with the school's students, from Bachelor's to Executive MBA level, a rare loyalty within the network that she continues to embody within the Alumni Association. A former President and then Vice-President of the association, she still supports the board today as legal counsel.
Defending creation, supporting innovation
After graduating from Sup de Luxe, Aurélie joined the law firm DDG, known for its strong footing in the luxury world. For twelve years, she advised some of the biggest houses on intellectual property matters: anti-counterfeiting, trademark protection, litigation, contracts, and customs seizures.
A conviction quickly took hold: behind every house, there are creators first and foremost. And behind every creation, a fragility.
Luxury is a powerful sector, admired for its creativity and craftsmanship, but also particularly exposed. The more creations circulate, the more vulnerable they become.
Aurélie has seen her profession transformed by digital technology. Where fashion shows were once reserved for a select few, creations are now visible instantly, everywhere in the world. That hyper-visibility also accelerates the risk of copying and counterfeiting.
Today, artificial intelligence is opening up a new, still-murky legal territory. Who owns the rights to a creation generated by AI? Can a work produced through an automated process be protected? The law is now working to answer these questions.
In 2018, after several years in private practice, Aurélie chose independence.
She decided to put her expertise at the service of smaller structures: entrepreneurs, independent creators, SMEs, and young brands that don't always have the instincts needed to protect their creations.
Everything often starts very early: a name, a logo, an idea. And sometimes, a simple mistake at that stage can have significant consequences.
Her role is to anticipate, secure, and guide.
Always with the same drive: to defend creation and allow innovation to endure.
Passing it on as a guiding thread
If Aurélie's path had to be summed up in one value, it would probably be transmission.
She passes it on to her clients, by advising and guiding them.
She passes it on to her students, by giving them the tools to understand and protect themselves.
And she passes it on in how she makes the law accessible, concrete, and easy to grasp.
For Aurélie, teaching and advocacy are never far apart.
What also stands out is the continuity across generations within the Sup de Luxe network. Through her own path, her loyalty to the school for more than twenty years, and the new classes arriving today, Aurélie embodies the idea that a network isn't built on a diploma alone, but on connections, on what is passed down, and on time.
Talking with her, one thing became clear: some people leave their mark on a school not only through their own path, but through what they continue to give others long after graduating.
And that, at its core, is probably the Sup de Luxe spirit.
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