Fashion Law Network

Chloe's Comeback

This episode is all about the Chloe fashion house and it's recent comeback with the signature boho-chic style. I begin with a background of the Chloe fashion house and the Richemont luxury conglomerate which owns Chloe. Then I discuss some recent trademarks and patents owned by Chloe and I end the episode with a discussion of the French lawsuit Richemont v. Louis Vuitton which centers on the Alhambra (Richemont- owned Van Cleef & Arpels) jewelry design. Enjoy and thank you for listening!

Duration:: 22m
Broadcast on:: 28 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Fashion Lawn Network podcast series. My name is Cashla Zabrowska-Trauben. I'm a patent attorney in fashion enthusiasts based in Los Angeles, California. Join me as I break down legal cases, discuss recent fashion news, and demystify patent law. Hello everyone, and welcome to the new episode of the Fashion Lawn Network podcast series. As always, thank you so much for joining me. And if you're in the United States, happy Thanksgiving. I'm actually recording this episode in Canada as I came here to see my family over the Thanksgiving break. And for anyone wondering, and I do get this question a lot when I'm saying I'm going to Canada for Thanksgiving, yes, Canada does celebrate Thanksgiving, but it's not in November. It's usually the second week of October. And that's supposedly because it's a time of the year when it's not too cold yet during the fall harvest. And interestingly, Canadian Thanksgiving is not directly related to the pilgrims like American Thanksgiving. Of course, Canadian Thanksgiving actually originated in the 1500s when English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew celebrated their safe arrival on the island of Newfoundland and Canada with a feast of salt, beef, biscuits, and mushy peas. Doesn't that sound delicious? Anyway, it's a side note. I actually used to live on the island of Newfoundland for a short time when my family and then arrived to Canada from Poland many years ago. Newfoundland is the most eastern Canadian province and it's actually only a four and a half, five hour flight to London, England from there. It's super beautiful. Winter's are really brutal though. They get tons of snow and it's always really windy which has something to do with the sun and the cold temperature of the ocean around the island. Definitely worth a visit best in the summer, of course. Anyway, onto more fashion related topics. So this episode will be all about the Chloe fashion house. I did an episode on the Chloe fashion house before. I think it was three years ago on this podcast series, but so much has changed now that I felt like I had to do an updated version with all the recent changes in news at Chloe. Chloe used to be one of my favorite fashion houses probably five, 10 years ago and then it kind of fell off my radar. It wasn't really loving all the new things they were coming out with. But then when the new creative director came on in the fall of 2023, Shemina Kamali, I became obsessed with Chloe again. She really brought Chloe back to its Boho roots, which is one of my favorite fashion aesthetics that there are. Now, I'm sure some of my listeners will already know this information, but the Chloe fashion house sells various women's luxury clothes, shoes, handbags. And there's also a lower price line that they own, which is called Seabike Chloe. This was launched back in 2001 by Phoebe Fylo, who was the creative director at that time. She was, of course, the creative director of Celine also. Seabike Chloe is described as being a fashion line, which provides more options for a younger age group. And the price point was also quite a bit lower than Chloe. However, according to women's word daily in an article they wrote announcing in 2021 that Chloe is set to phase out their Seabike Chloe business because they want to basically be a more upscale company over the next three years. So it looks like this year, 2024 will most likely be the last year that Seabike Chloe will be around. And upon doing just a Google search on Seabike Chloe, I saw that it's still possible to buy their items, looks like Netaporte and some other similar retailers sell the Seabike Chloe, mostly clothing and handbags at quite discounted prices. However, that may be because it's almost Black Friday here in the US. So there are a lot of sales going on right now, but Seabike Chloe at its peak, which they used to be super popular. I remember represented about 10% of the total Chloe fashion house business. And women's word daily also reported that the Chloe CEO at the time Ricardo Bellini characterized the phase out as a quote natural and necessary evolution for the longterm as the Chloe fashion house continues to elevate this image and product lines. There are 19 free-standing Seabike Chloe stores in Japan, but the business is roughly 60% wholesale concentrated in Europe and the United States. So I wonder when, or if they probably already have started closing some of those stores. So now let's go through a brief history of the Chloe fashion house before we get into some interesting trademarks and patents that Chloe owns that I didn't talk about in the first episode. And then I will go over a very interesting lawsuit that Rishmont, which is the luxury conglomerate that owns Chloe, has been involved with. So according to looksmagazine.co.uk, the Chloe fashion house was established by Gabby Agignon in 1953. She was born in Egypt, she got an education in political science. In 1945, Gabby and her husband moved to Paris. And at that time, Gabby didn't have a job and she just wanted to have a fashion label. Her husband, Jacques Lenoir, was supportive and he handled the business side of the fashion house. And Agignon chose the name Chloe for the company in 1952 and it was dedicated to a friend of hers by the same name. And then she had her first fashion show in 1956 at the Cafe de Floor, which was all the rage back then. It's still super popular now. And Chloe's first fashion show was a hit. And as a luxury fashion house, Chloe of course focuses on luxury and kind of that free spirited feminine clothing. And I found some really interesting facts about the Chloe fashion house that you may not know, which intrigued me. Some lot of fashion designers started their journey at Chloe, like Karl Lagerfeld, who of course is synonymous with Chanel. So he was at Chloe in 1966. Also Stella McCartney, who became super famous after working at Chloe, she now has her own fashion line, shoe line. I think she makes sunglasses and of course her bags that Fallabella bag that she makes is very famous. And Chloe was also the first to invent padlock bags. And they sold 8,000 of them before even hitting the stores. And I don't know if you guys listen to my Chloe episode right before this one. That may be a good idea to get some extra background. But Chloe was also one of the first companies to come up with the it bag status based on this padlock bag. So that's interesting. And Gabby was also the first female French designer to start the concept of luxury and ready to wear pieces for women. Then we had Gabriela Hurst become the creative director of Chloe until 2023. And it's rumored that she left the position because of pressures placed on her by her transatlantic schedule. She apparently ran a New York business while leading the Chloe design studio in Paris. So I'm sure that was really difficult traveling between New York and Paris with what sounded like two full times jobs essentially. So then in October of 2023, Chloe appointed Shemina Kamali as a creative director. And I went on Chloe's website. There's a nice little biography of her. I'll just give you a quick rundown. She's born in Germany, 1981. She did a master of arts and fashion at Central St. Martin's University of the Arts in London, graduated 2007. And she actually already has two decades of experience including a long tenure at Chloe. She began her career at Chloe as part of Phoebe Philo's team. So that's really interesting because Phoebe Philo was the one that really put Chloe on the map, I think it was 10 or 15 years ago with those Boho looks. And then most recently, Shemina Kamali was the women's ready to wear design director for Anthony Vaccarello at St. Laurent. So she obviously has a great pedigree coming to Chloe. The Chloe website goes on to say that the appointment of Shemina Kamali as Chloe's new creative director marks a meaningful return for her. And I have to say, Chloe is totally back on my radar after a few years, largely in part due to the new creative director, I think. She really brought the Chloe house back to their 1970s kind of Boho roots, which as I said before is definitely one of my favorite fashion looks. Her latest collection, and I'll put a link to this in the episode notes of this episode, are these beautiful, soft, like dreamy, roughly dresses styled with over the knee boots and cropped cakes. They had such an impact on me. I've been really lusting after a few of their items. Maybe the Black Friday sales will have something for me. The over the knee boots are one of the hottest items right now. They're sold out in many sizes. They're called the Eve boot, and they have a round toe and a stacked heel over the knee, of course, and like beautiful, soft leather. But they retail for over $2,000 though, which is tough to justify, especially for me, living in a warm climate like Los Angeles. So as I mentioned earlier, the Chloe fashion house is owned by Rishmont, and Rishmont was actually founded by a South African man named Johann Rupert, and he spun off the international assets of a company owned by his father, also South African, and they formed the initial group of Rishmont subsidiaries, which I think is now actually based in Switzerland. And as of 2014, Rishmont took the title as the second largest luxury goods company in the world after, guess what, of course, LVMH. And in 2015, Rishmont's Netaporte group, 'cause Rishmont's also owns Netaporte, merged with Yux in a all-share transaction. Well, looking back now, that probably wasn't the best idea, because in August, 2022, they were looking for someone to buy a 47.5% stake in that YNAP Yux Netaporte company to Farfetch, and that was in exchange for Farfetch shares. And in January, 2024, that fell through, because Farfetch was acquired by Korean e-commerce company Koopang and delisted. So that, of course, ended Rishmont's plant sale of that Yux Netaporte majority stake. Then in July, 2023, Rishmont acquired a 70% stake in Italian shoemaker company, Gianvito Rossi, love their shoes, they're so comfortable. Then in October, 2023, Rishmont was the sixth-largest corporation in the Swiss market index, so very impressive. In May 2024, Rishmont acquired Italian jewelry brand, Vernier, for an undisclosed sum, so it looks like they're just on the up and up. Now, I'm sure Rishmont is happy, because they ended up finding a buyer for that loss-making Yux Netaporte group after the failed Farfetch deal, and VogueBusiness.com had a great article about it, so they say that my Teresa has entered into a binding agreement to acquire 100% of Yux Netaporte from Rishmont, and Rishmont will sell Yux Netaporte for 555 million euros in exchange for a 33% stake in my Teresa. Now, my Teresa's also a really interesting company, 'cause it's one of the only online luxury e-commerce platforms that seem to be really thriving now. You guys might remember that matches went under, not too long ago, I think like only one year ago, so Johann Rupert, the chairman of Rishmont, said they're pleased to have found such a good home for Yux Netaporte, and that my Teresa is ideally placed to build on Yux Netaporte's assets to further delayed customers, and then the VogueBusiness article goes on to kind of talk about how the luxury e-commerce space was super crowded probably four or five years ago, but it's dramatically send out most significantly after Farfetch had that crazy fire sale when the Korean couping bought them, and that actually, I actually do like a deep dive on that crazy situation with Farfetch on a previous podcast episode. It has Farfetch in the title. I think it's "Who's the Fairness of them All?" part two. There's some really interesting details on that whole situation. Now, Rishmont had been mulling a sale of that loss-making Yux Netaporte for a long time, so I'm sure they're thrilled that they have that off their back now. Now, let's switch gears to talk about trademarks that Chloe owns. So according to my research on the United States Patent and Trademark Office trademark database, it looks like they own over 20 marks, and it seems like Chloe tried to come out with a perfume under the name Leacy, L-I-S-Y, but that is now abandoned. And as I mentioned before, it's a great idea to file a trademark under what's called an intent-to-use basis. That's basically done just to reserve the name for yourself, and then you can convert it to a use-in-commerce mark once you actually start using it for sales, et cetera. So it looks like Chloe took advantage of that strategy with various trademark filings, which were filed under this intent-to-use trademark basis. Now from the patent side, Chloe owns about 16 patents, according to the USPTO patent database, all our design patents for various handbags and accessories. They're not overly robust in their patent portfolio, unfortunately. The most recent patents are from 2018 and '19 for a design of a perfume bottle and sunglasses. The sunglasses, it's those round, lens-wave, they have like a wave pattern on the outside of them. That Chloe did a few years ago that were really popular. They keep selling them now too, so it looks like it's a classic design for Chloe. Now in terms of lawsuits, Chloe hasn't really been involved in too many that I could find recently. The main trademark infringement lawsuit that comes up associated with Chloe was one from 2019 at the Japan trademark office, wherein the opposition board of the Japan patent office upheld an opposition filed by Chloe, so they ruled for Chloe, against the registration of another mark called Chloe Francis, all one word, which was filed by Japanese shoemaker in the shoe category. So the Japanese patent office stated that the Chloe Francis mark would likely cause confusion with the French fashion house Chloe. So I'm sure Chloe was thrilled with that decision. And upon doing my research, I came across another really interesting recent lawsuit initiated by Rishmont in the Parisian court system, and it just had its conclusion in June of 2023. So as I mentioned earlier, Rishmont is of course the owner of Chloe, but they also own Van Cleef and Arpeil, which is that really famous jewelry company. And this legal battle centered on the Alombra jewelry design that Van Cleef is known for against the Louis Vuitton fashion house, which of course is owned by the largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH. So the Alombra jewelry design under Van Cleef is described as a talismanic design, inspired by a four leaf clover, reminiscent of traditional Morris quattrofoil. It's a framework pattern consisting of four overlapping circles. And Van Cleef has actually sold this design since 1968. So I was unable to pull the actual complaint. I don't even know what it's called in France for this lawsuit. So I instead had to collect my research from a few various websites, which I will cite here. So essentially in 2015, Van Cleef discovered that Louis Vuitton introduced a jewelry collection named Blossom. And upon looking at their jewelry pieces, it looks to me like it's a kind of what looks like a four leaf clover, but it's inside of a round shaped disc, like just like a round flat pendant with a little dot in the middle. So Richemont International filed an action against Louis Vuitton for what's called in France free writing, claiming that the Blossom line reproduced all the distinctive features of their Alombra design. And upon researching free writing under French law, it seems that it occurs when one business benefits from the efforts of a competitor by writing on its coattails, thereby gaining an economic advantage without making equivalent efforts. So basically like a US version of our unfair use and competition. And according to salieravocot.com, an example of free writing is given when the Paris Court of Appeal sanctioned a company, which specialized in the sale of tooling equipment for copying the layout of a website of their competitor, which the competitor had spent a large amount of money on for its creation. The court held that the company's commercial strategy of mimicking its competitor's online business, thereby saving time and resources and research and development while depriving the competitor of the full profit, constituted free writing. Now, according to lexology.com, Louis Vuitton tried to defend themselves in this lawsuit, of course. And they stated that they had already registered the design of this four leaf flower or four loped flower and closed in a circle as a trademark back in 1996, specifically for jewelry and other categories. That floral design, including four round petal designs, were also widely used by other jewelry companies and they kind of showed how other jewelry companies use that four leaf clover. So then the Paris commercial court found Louis Vuitton liable of free writing and they ordered them to pay over 200,000 euros in compensation to the plaintiff, so Rishmont. I think this is like the US version of our state court. The court in Paris also banned the sale and manufacture of the contested jewelry pieces from the blossom line, subject to a fine. And Louis Vuitton also had to pay 120,000 euros of legal cost to Rishmont. So Louis Vuitton, of course, was not happy with the decision and they appealed. Seeking the dismissal of plaintiff's claims, Cartier and Rishmont and Cartier are sometimes titled together because that's, I think, their biggest other company that they own. So they crossed appeal seeking additional damages. So then the case went on to the Paris court of appeal, so kind of like the US appellate court, and that court actually reversed the judgment of the lower court and they ruled for Louis Vuitton. They stated that the blossom jewelry pieces, while similar in size to Van Cleef, didn't have the major distinctive characteristics of the Van Cleef jewelry, such as being double-sided, smooth stone, pearl setting, and beaded. They also noted that the use of a four leaf shape was common in the arts and jewelry, and they cited similar collections of Chopard, Bukalati, and Morganne Bello. Finally, the court recognized that Louis Vuitton drew inspiration from their own monogram canvas. They had adapted it to a current trend, and they did not position themselves to be too similar of the Van Cleef model. Now, this is an interesting point because the Louis Vuitton monogram does have that quote blossom design within their monogram pattern. So in the end, the Paris court of appeal reversed the judgment of the first Paris commercial lower court ruling, and not only that, but they also ordered Rishmond to pay 50,000 euros of legal costs to Louis Vuitton. So I'm sure they weren't too happy about that, and Bernarda know it, OVMH, I'm sure was very happy with that. And with that, this will conclude this episode. Thank you so much for joining me, and stay tuned for my next episode soon.