Having a career in fashion and magazines has always meant that I have not had to follow many of the stricter dress code rules that some of my female friends have had to over the course of their careers. Of course, we’ve got our own codes in this business, but that’s a different matter.

I remember the first summer we all lived in NYC after college and the envy I witnessed in the eyes of my friends heading off to their jobs at Goldman or McKinsey, their looks completed with panty hose and closed toed shoes. I was in a skirt (sans hose, of course) and sandals.

I thought of this when reading Robin Givhan’s piece in the yesterday’s Washington Post on the sartorial choices of Sonia Sotomayor during last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

Well, now, isn’t this a little fun fact right up our copyright-obsessed alley?

Turns out that Sonia Sotomayor, our newest nominee to the Supreme Court, once battled fashion counterfeiters with a serious vengeance.

Back in 1986, as a lawyer in private practice at Pavia & Harcourt, she represented the Fendi family and even took part in something called the “Fendi Crush” where they literally smashed a bunch of phony Fendis in a garbage truck, smack dab in front of Tavern on the Green.