Authored By: Dhiya Madhan
Christ (Deemed to be University)
ABSTRACT
The impact of celebrities may even go on long after their death, especially in the case of brands and products from the fashion and luxury industry, where personality, reputation, and heritage become commercialized commodities. Dead celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Princess Diana, and Michael Jackson still have a part to play in promotional campaigns, licensed merchandise, and even digitally resurfaced in a commercial context, creating significant commercial benefit posthumously. This research seeks to look into the issues of legal and ethical posthumous celebrity commercialization for fashion marketing purposes. This research aims to analyse the idea of personality rights, examine the current legal practices in America, Europe, and India concerning these rights, and consider the issue of artificial intelligence and digital technology in the posthumous utilization of personality and image for fashion marketing purposes.
INTRODUCTION
Fashion is more than fabric and form; it is aspiration, status, identity, and memory woven into wearable dreams. Luxury brands have long understood this, harnessing the enduring cultural power of icons long after their physical presence fades. Marilyn Monroe’s Image still graces perfume bottles and apparel decades after 1962. Andre Hepburn’s elegant silhouette continues to inspire campaigns and licensing deals. Princess Diana’s legacy influences collections, while Michael Jackson and others appear in posthumous collaborations. These examples raise a poignant question: can a dead celebrity still wear “luxury”?
This paper examines the extent to which fashion brands should be permitted to commercially exploit the identity of deceased celebrities. It asks whether existing legal frameworks adequately protect postmortem personality rights in the era of digital fashion and AI-generated advertising. The core argument is that while deceased celebrities generate enormous economic value, legal protections remain fragmented and inconsistent across jurisdictions. As AI enables digital resurrection, stronger, more coherent safeguards are needed to balance commercial interests with dignity, consent, and legacy.
The topic stirs both fascination and unease. There is something hauntingly human about a celebrity’s persona outliving their body – profitable yet ethically fraught. Fashion sells not just products but the emotional resonance of these figures. Yet exploitation without boundaries risks commodifying memory itself.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Personality rights encompass the bundle of protections over one’s name, likeness, voice, signature, and other indicia of identity. They stem from the right to privacy and dignity, shielding individuals from unwanted commercial appropriation. The right of publicity a primarily commercial offshoot (strongest in the US), grants control over the economic exploitation of one’s identity.
Postmortem rights raised deeper philosophical questions: Does identity constitute property that heirs can inherit and monetize indefinitely? Or is it tethered to dignity, extinguishing at death? jurisdictions divide sharply. Some treat it as descendible property; others prioritise privacy or public domain access. Trademark law offers supplementary protection where identity functions as a source identifier (for example, registered marks for names or logos), often through doctrines like passing off.
In fashion marketing, these rights collide with a brand’s desire for evocative storytelling. AI-generated recreations amplify the stakes, allowing hyper-realistic resurrections that blur lines between homage and fabrication.
LEGAL FRAMEWORK
The US boasts the most developed regime, though it varies by state. California protects for 70 years post death; Tennessee offers potentially perpetual rights if commercially exploited; Indiana provides up to 100 years. New York recently enacted postmortem protections for 40 years.
Key cases illustrate breadth. In White vs. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (1992), The Ninth Circuit held that a robot evolving Vanna White’s persona in an advertisement appropriated her identity, even without direct name or photo use. The court emphasised that identity extends beyond literal likeness.
Carson vs. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc was a case in 1983. It protected Johnny Carson’s phrase. This case showed that things that are very distinctive can be a part of a company’s identity.
There was another case in 1988, Midler vs. Ford Motor Co. This case was about Bette Midler’s voice. Someone was imitating her voice in a commercial. The court said that imitating someone’s voice on purpose to make money is not right.
Some cases happen after the person has passed away. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centre for Social Change Inc vs. American Heritage Products, Inc in 1983. This case said that the rights to a person’s personality do not go away when they die. These rights can still be protected if someone is using them without permission to make money.
The cases about Elvis Presley Enterprises also showed that these rights can be passed down. This means that the people in charge of Elvis Presley’s estate can control what happens with his merchandise.
There is also a law called the Lanham Act. This law is about trademarks. It says that if someone is using an endorsement that is not right. This is relevant now because of intelligence. If artificial intelligence is used to make it seem like a famous person is endorsing a luxury product without their permission, that is not allowed.
EUROPEAN UNION AND INDIA
Protection within the EU relies heavily on privacy, dignity, and data protection (GDPR). The scope of post-mortem rights is narrow, usually relating to either moral rights or the interests of the heirs’ reputations.
The Indian legal system does not have any specific legislation regarding the protection of publicity rights. Protection comes from provisions like Article 21 (right to life and dignity), personal rights case laws, passing off, and trademark law. It has been increasingly accepted that there is commercial value in the personality of celebrities.
Some of the landmark judgments are in cases like ICC Development (International) Ltd v Arvee Enterprises (2003). In this case, it was held that publicity rights were inherent in an individual (as opposed to an event) and developed from privacy. Also, in the case of Titan Industries Ltd v Ramkumar Jewellers (2012)Images of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan were protected from being used for unauthorized advertisements by using passing off, indicating independent commercial value in celebrity personalities.
AI-GENERATED CELEBRITY RECREATIONS AND POST-MORTEM EXPLOITATION
Artificial intelligence is making things more complicated. Now we have influencers and deepfakes that let companies use deceased people who are famous in new ads. Like Marilyn Monroe walking around in fancy clothes, which are easily generated today. The people who own the rights to these celebrities can make a lot of money from this, like Audrey Hepburn’s estate, which makes millions of dollars every year from fashion and beauty companies.
When companies use artificial intelligence without permission, it raises big questions about whether it is acceptable or not, and whether it is respectful to the deceased.
- It is not clear if the dead person would have wanted to be used in this way
- It is not clear if this is honest and transparent
Tupac Shakur appeared as a hologram at Coachella in 2012, and this was a sign of things to come. Maybe we will see digital versions of people walking on runways for fashion shows.
The law is not doing a job of keeping up with this. Some states in the US are trying to address the issue of intelligence replicas, like California and Tennessee, which have a law called the ELVIS Act. India is also looking at how to deal with personality rights in these cases. There are still a lot of gaps when it comes to bringing people back to life digitally.
It is not right that companies can make money from people without their permission. It is like they are saying that the celebrity is endorsing a product when they might not have wanted to. The families of these celebrities are under pressure to make money from their legacy. If they have control over it forever, it could stop people from being creative and making new things.
We need to think about how the rights to someone’s image and likeness should last. Should it be 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, or never?
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The idea of celebrity identity is really about two things: the person and their public image. If we think of it as something that can be owned, then the people who inherit it have a lot of power, but it is like we are treating people like objects. On the one hand, if we think of it only as something important to the person, we are respecting their autonomy, but we are not considering the money that can be made from it. The fashion world is really good at making people want things. This can make companies want to use celebrity images to sell things, but it is also risky because people can get upset if they think the company is being disrespectful.
It is hard to know what is okay. What is not, because different places have different rules. Something that is okay in one place might not be okay in another. Now we have computers that can make pictures and videos of people that look really real, but did not actually exist before. So, who owns these pictures and videos? We have some laws that can help, like trademark laws. We need to think carefully about what is right and wrong.
People have strong feelings about this. Fans feel like they have a connection to people, and the families of famous people want to protect their legacy, both the money they can make from it and the way people remember them. Companies want to be popular and relevant. Weirdly, we can use technology to bring back people who have died. We do not really know what the rules are for this. Maybe if we had some rules, like limits on how long people can own the rights to someone’s image after they die, and rules about telling people when computers are used to make pictures and videos, we could find a balance between making money and being respectful.
We can see how this works in life. For example, Marilyn Monroe’s estate is still making a lot of money from her image. There are still fights about who owns the rights to her pictures. Audrey Hepburn’s estate is very careful about how her image is used, and they work with companies like Givenchy to make sure she is remembered respectfully. When companies use pictures or references to Princess Diana, it raises questions about whether they have permission to do so and whether it’s respectful. These examples make us think about how famous people can have an impact long after they are gone, but they also make us uncomfortable because it seems like they are being used just to make money.
CONCLUSION
The commercial legacy of celebrity identity constitutes perhaps one of the most difficult intersections of fashion, technology, and intellectual property. The death of stars is a significant source of profit for luxury brands, capitalizing on the inspirational qualities of celebrities as part of marketing efforts. However, regulatory regimes are disjointed, being highly developed yet flexible in the USA, respectful of dignity in Europe, and jurisprudential in India. The use of AI-created images further complicates matters, facilitating exploitation without proper consent or boundaries.
Regulation requires a shift away from outdated publicity law concepts toward sensible and measured regulations—potentially even federal or international guidelines that include time limitations, mandatory disclosures, and considerations of dignity. Such measures would protect the economic interests of descendants while preventing the unrestricted commodification of memories. In essence, the issue goes well beyond legal considerations—when using deceased identities to sell inspiration, what obligations do we have towards those living echoes of humanity?
Finally, I would like to conclude my paper by quoting a famous line, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” By Milan Kundera. As rightly pointed out, the challenge for modern fashion law is to ensure that remembrance does not become unrestricted commodification.
