I was three video essays deep on a Tuesday night; the scroll started as research and ended as something closer to dread when I landed on the one about the “big words” fight. The whole argument had started over a single word, scrying, posted on Threads by a reader alongside a request: “authors, please use easier words“. When other readers pushed back, a defender reframed the pushback itself as the problem, telling critics to check their ableism: “authors who use big words are ableist.” No, I’m not kidding. One video essay responding to the fallout took the claim apart piece by piece, arguing that the real issue was not ableism but what she called the infantilizing of readers, and named the pattern outright as evidence of “a huge problem with anti-intellectualism in our country right now.” She reached for an analogy that has made my brain feel heavy: a building can install a ramp beside the staircase without tearing the staircase out the same way a book can exist for readers who want a simpler vocabulary without anyone asking every other book to lower itself to meet them. I closed my iPad that night with a feeling I’ve carried into every fashion story I have written since.

I work in an industry that talks about culture constantly. I wanted to know if we are actually part of it, or just watching it happen to someone else.

BookTok’s Fight Over “Big Words” and What Counts as Reading

The vocabulary fight was not an isolated flare-up. A separate video making the rounds way before showed a reader working through a fantasy novel and stopping to ask, more or less, why the pages were so filled with so many words in the first place, a moment that went on to rack up tens of millions of views on X and split the conversation in two, with one camp asking why anyone would be surprised that a book has words on its pages and another arguing she was simply a reader who tried a genre that was not built for her, according to reporting from the Independent and Unilad. It sat inside a longer pattern BookTok has been having with itself for a while now, one where a growing number of readers admit, without much shame, that they skip the parts of a book that are not dialogue. BuzzFeed reported on readers logging thirty or more books a year by reading only the conversations and cutting everything else, the description and the sentences doing the quiet work of building a world before anyone speaks in it, and the response split the community in two, with defenders calling it a valid way to read and critics asking what a reader can honestly call finished when half the book goes unread. One commenter said the practice made her want to put her head through a door.

I do not bring this up to make fun of anyone’s reading habits, because I read a lot, and I live inside this space enough to know the discourse is rarely as simple as either side wants it to be. What strikes me is the shape of the argument itself. The complaint was never really about one word or one dense paragraph. It was about the demand a book makes on a reader’s attention, and a growing appetite to negotiate that demand down. The literacy researchers behind that instinct are not wrong to worry either. About 21% of American adults score at or below the lowest tier of English literacy, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and a reader who struggles with a page has every reason to want a book meant for her. The argument was never about whether those books should exist. It was about whether every other book owes her the same accommodation. As a writer, should I also change my writing tone?

Why Critics Praised The Odyssey for Refusing to Explain Itself

I noticed the same shape of complaint showing up around film, just aimed the other direction. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opened this summer to a 94% critics’ score and a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the praise kept circling back to the same idea: this film refuses to hold your hand. Forbes called it ambitious and moody, and admitted the film asks you to sit with it, maybe even watch it twice, before you fully catch what Nolan built. Nobody asked for the nearly three-hour runtime to be trimmed down. People kept describing that demand as a relief. Somewhere along the way, a script that trusts its audience to keep up became the exception worth celebrating rather than the baseline anyone expected, and that tells you something about every script that came before it, the ones that explain a character’s motive out loud in case you missed the look on their face, the ones that narrate a twist before it lands so nobody has to sit in confusion for even a second.

Skimming a book for dialogue and praising a film for refusing to explain itself sound like opposite instincts, but they answer the same complaint. Something in us has gotten less willing to sit inside difficulty and wait for it to pay off.

What Attention Span Research Reveals About Why We Skim

None of this lives only in vibes. Gloria Mark, a researcher at UC Irvine who has spent two decades tracking how long people stay focused on a single screen, found that the average attention span on one task dropped from about two and a half minutes in 2004 to roughly 47 seconds by the late 2010s, with half of all those stretches lasting 40 seconds or less, according to her research summarised by Silicon Canals. Mark is careful to say this is not proof that human brains have broken. It is proof that the environment asking for our attention has changed shape faster than we have adapted to it, notification by notification, tab by tab, until switching became the default and staying became the effort.

That is the part that makes the BookTok fight and the Nolan praise make sense together. A reader who has spent the day fragmenting attention across a dozen screens is not lazy for wanting a book that asks less of her. She is responding rationally to a nervous system that a full day of screens has trained, hour after hour, to expect the next thing in seconds rather than minutes.

Is Fashion Anti-Intellectual Too, or Just Quiet About It?

Now here is the part I cannot stop turning over. Fashion sits inside the exact same attention economy as books and film, scrolled through on the same thumb, competing for the same 47 seconds, and yet fashion rarely produces this kind of open argument about itself. We do not really have a fashion equivalent of the big words debate, a public fight over whether a look asks too much of the person wearing it, whether an outfit should have to be explained or defended the way a paragraph does. When fashion does turn self-critical, it is almost always because a story has crossed into something the culture at large is already fighting about: appropriation, labour, size, money. The industry rarely turns that same lens on its own trend cycle and asks whether the cycle itself has gotten too easy to just go along with.

I do not think that silence means fashion is exempt. I think it might mean the appetite for the easy version is moving through fashion in a way that never has to say its own name, because nobody needs to defend a purchase the way a reader has to defend a book they claim to have finished.

Inside the Speed of Today’s Fashion Trend Cycle

The clearest evidence sits in how fast a trend now lives and dies. A microtrend today can rise and disappear within a handful of weeks, sometimes a single season, and the same platforms that host the BookTok arguments now drive that speed. The office siren aesthetic and brat summer each burn through their moment faster than the one before it. An influencer can wear something once and watch the search volume spike within hours. None of that leaves much room for a person to sit with a look, try it on in their head, and decide whether it actually says anything about them before the next trend has already taken its place.

Layered underneath that speed is a forecasting apparatus that increasingly runs on AI rather than instinct. Firms like Heuritech and WGSN now feed runway footage and social activity into algorithms that cross-check the results against purchase data, flagging a trend months before it reaches a mainstream feed, work that used to belong to editors sitting front row and trusting their own eye. Heuritech’s Noémie Voyer described catching “early signals of trends” long before shoppers ever see them coming. That is not really a person deciding what they like. That is a person being shown, with mounting precision, what they are statistically about to want.

I keep coming back to the same fork in that idea, and I am genuinely unsure which side of it is true. An influencer chasing a trend at that speed has an obvious, almost forgivable reason: staying visible is the job, and the algorithm rewards speed over reflection. But most people buying into a look within days of seeing it are not being paid to keep up. So what is their reason? Is it the same reflex that makes a reader skip to the dialogue, the same fatigue that makes a slow film feel like a chore instead of a gift, showing up in a closet instead of a bookshelf? Or is getting dressed simply a different kind of decision than reading a novel, one that was never supposed to demand the same kind of sustained attention in the first place?

The Digital Detox Trend That Complicates This Theory

There is a complication I do not want to leave out, because it cuts against my own worry. Daily social media use across wealthier markets has actually dropped to around two hours and twenty minutes, nearly 10% below its 2022 peak, and researchers at Ofcom found that 48% of young adults believe they spend too much time online, with 68% actively trying to cut back. People are buying film cameras again. Paperbacks are outselling e-readers in some markets. Journals and phone-free meetups keep showing up as the thing people say they want more of. If an appetite for something slower and harder is genuinely returning, fashion would be a strange place for it to stop.

I do not have fashion’s own version of the vocabulary fight or the three-hour runtime to point to as clear evidence either way, not yet. What I have is a habit I noticed in myself after that video essay, the instinct to open an app and let it tell me what is worth wanting before I have asked myself the question first. I still do not know if that is anti-intellectualism wearing a new outfit, or something else entirely that just happens to look the same from this angle. I only know I have started paying attention to the seconds it takes me to decide I want something I saw for the first time an hour ago, and I am not sure I like what I am timing.

The Death of Trends: Has Individual Style Finally Triumphed?

Sources

The Independent, via Inkl: TikToker sparks debate after asking why book “has so many words on the page”

Unilad: People think ‘BookTok’ is killing literature

National Center for Education Statistics: Adult Literacy in the United States

Unexpected Paths: The “Big Words” Controversy

BuzzFeed: The Internet Rages Over New “Dialogue Only” Readers

Rotten Tomatoes: The Odyssey (2026)

Forbes: ‘The Odyssey’ Review

Silicon Canals: Gloria Mark’s attention span research

Fashion Law Journal: Is This the End for Microtrends?

NPR: How the fashion industry is using AI to predict the next big trend

Unplugged: 2026 Is The Year Of Analogue and Offline

The post Is There Anti-Intellectualism in Fashion? appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

Last month, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a full retrospective for John Galliano titled “Horizons,” this column argued that the name mattered almost as much as the designer, since a museum can frame an artist’s history as a straight line forward, or as a record with a rupture running through it. The Met had clearly picked forward. That honour is rare enough to explain why the announcement made news in the first place: only two other living designers, Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017, have ever received a full solo Costume Institute retrospective. Then, on August 31, 2026, Galliano withdrew from the show, and the Met’s Costume Institute has since confirmed that the retrospective, planned for May 2027, will not proceed as announced. What follows is not a verdict on whether that outcome was right. It is an account of what actually happened, and a look at why the same industry has answered this exact question differently before.

What John Galliano Said When He Withdrew From the Met

Galliano’s own statement did not read like a man forced out. “After much reflection and discussion with all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition to not take place at this time,” he wrote, adding that he remained “fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities,” and that he remained “deeply sorry.” Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator, publicly backed the decision. “I believe deeply in the responsibility of museums to examine difficult histories with rigor, candor, and care,” he said. “I also recognize the pain and concern this exhibition has caused.” Anna Wintour, who had defended the original announcement by saying Galliano’s career “isn’t defined by a moment” and that he was “deserving of an exhibition of this scale,” called the withdrawal itself “very courageous and a measure of the man he is.” Two different moments, two different Galliano stories, both endorsed by the same person, in the same year.

John Galliano’s Full Timeline, From the 2011 Scandal to the Met Cancellation

Strip away the arguments on either side and a plain sequence of dates remains. Christian Dior and his own namesake label fired Galliano in March 2011, after footage surfaced of him hurling antisemitic and racist remarks at Géraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti at a bar in the Marais district of Paris. A French court convicted him that June of publicly insulting the pair over their ethnic and religious identity, and it ordered him to pay a fine and cover the complainants’ legal costs. By July, Kate Moss had worn a Galliano gown to marry Jamie Hince, and Vogue’s September issue covered the wedding. Two years later, Galliano sued Dior and his own label for unfair dismissal, arguing the companies knew about his substance abuse and had piled on the professional pressure that led to it, and seeking between 2.4 million and 13 million euros in damages. A French labour court rejected the claim in November 2014 and ordered him to pay each company a symbolic one euro. He joined Maison Margiela as creative director in 2014 and stayed for a decade, culminating in a Spring 2024 Artisanal collection that much of the industry called one of the great runway shows of the last twenty years. None of these dates is in dispute. What people disagree on is what they add up to.

Who Opposed the Galliano Met Exhibition, and Who Defended It

The most unexpected early voice against the exhibition belonged to Dana Thomas, the journalist who literally wrote the book on Galliano. Her 2015 biography, “Gods and Kings,” remains one of the definitive accounts of his rise and fall, and on August 6, 2026, she used a New York Times guest essay to argue the Met was making, as her headline put it, “a very bad mistake”. That essay is widely credited with turning a simmering online debate into a story the museum’s own trustees could no longer avoid. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin led the public opposition that followed, noting that the city gives the Met over three million dollars a year in discretionary grants and calling the exhibition “a grave mistake” that had not been “thoroughly vetted and discussed by the full board.” She said honoring “someone who has a longstanding history of deeply offensive, antisemitic and anti-Asian remarks is not acceptable.” Donor Alice Tisch reportedly called the planned show a whitewash. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt struck a more layered note, saying the organization had “long since accepted” Galliano’s apology but that honoring him now, with antisemitism at what he called crisis levels, was “the wrong move at the wrong moment.” Rabbi Rick Jacobs offered something closer to the middle, saying Galliano had shown “the contrition necessary to earn his return to the fashion world” while stopping short of endorsing a museum retrospective specifically.

On the other side, Wintour and much of the fashion press argued that a four-decade body of work should not be erased by one recorded incident, however serious. They pointed to the unglamorous parts of Galliano’s rehabilitation that rarely made headlines: years of sobriety, and quiet meetings with Jewish community leaders that were never staged for publicity. Supporters also noted that Galliano had not demanded a return to the spotlight. He rebuilt his career through smaller, less ceremonial design roles for years before Maison Margiela ever gave him a namesake stage again.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Met Gala Retrospective: Why His Show Wasn’t Cancelled

Fashion has already answered a version of this question, and it answered differently. In 2023, the Met’s Costume Institute mounted “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” a full retrospective spanning the designer’s decades at Chanel and Fendi. Lagerfeld’s public record is not exactly quiet on its own. In a 2017 French television appearance, he defended Angela Merkel’s refugee policy by saying “one cannot, even if there are decades between them, kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place,” a comment many read as both antisemitic and Islamophobic. He also dismissed the #MeToo movement by telling models “if you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model,” and back in the early 1990s printed verses from the Quran onto dresses purely as decoration, a controversy that trailed him for years afterward. Somehow, none of it stopped the 2023 exhibition from opening as planned, gala and all. There was public criticism at the time, including from commentators who argued directly that the Met was ignoring his Islamophobia and misogyny in order to celebrate his silhouettes, but the show went ahead anyway. Lagerfeld, to be fair, never faced a criminal conviction the way Galliano did, and his comments came in the relative safety of interviews rather than a drunken outburst caught on tape, distinctions his defenders leaned on. Still, fashion had already answered the underlying question, whether a museum should stage a celebratory retrospective for a designer with a documented history of bigoted remarks, three years before Galliano’s case ever put it back on the table.

The Chuck Close Precedent: When Museums Have Cancelled Exhibitions Before

The pattern is not unique to fashion. In January 2018, the National Gallery of Art in Washington postponed a planned exhibition of photorealist painter Chuck Close after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, alleging he asked them to pose nude unexpectedly and made explicit comments about their bodies during studio sessions, according to NPR. Close disputed the characterisation, saying, “I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we’re all adults,” while denying he had intentionally made anyone uncomfortable. The museum’s spokesperson said only that it was “not the appropriate time to present these installations.” Close’s case differs from Galliano’s in one significant way: the alleged misconduct tied directly to the making of the art itself, happening inside the same studio sessions that produced the celebrated portraits. Galliano’s remarks happened at a bar, far from a runway or a sketchbook. Whether that distinction should matter to a museum deciding what to honour is itself part of the debate, not a settled answer to it.

Separating the Art From the Artist: The Case for Gauguin, Picasso, and Galliano

Defenders of keeping controversial figures on museum walls tend to reach for the same handful of names, and the names are hard to argue with on their own terms. Paul Gauguin’s Post-Impressionist paintings remain fixtures of major collections even though his years in Tahiti involved sexual relationships with teenagers, a history most museums now handle through wall text rather than removal. Biographers have spent decades documenting Pablo Picasso‘s treatment of the women in his life, and yet he’s still routinely described as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, his retrospectives largely untouched by that personal history. The logic behind these examples is simple enough: start removing every artist whose personal conduct wouldn’t survive today’s scrutiny, and entire wings of major museums would empty out, taking with them work that shaped how later generations learned to paint and design. Critics push back on that logic, though. A wall label, they argue, is one thing. A solo retrospective, complete with a gala thrown in its honour, is another matter entirely.

What John Galliano’s Met Gala Cancellation Really Means for Fashion

“Horizons” was always a strange word to put on a show that ended up defined by its past rather than its forward motion. The Met now says it will announce a new theme for its May 2027 gala, and Galliano continues to work at Maison Margiela, where none of the donors or city officials objecting to the museum retrospective has called for his removal. That gap, between what an industry will let a person do for a living and what a civic institution will let it call an honour, is where this story actually sits. Lagerfeld got his celebration. Close did not get his. Galliano, for now, gets neither the exhibition nor a clear answer about what would have made one acceptable. The Met’s silence on that last point may turn out to be the most consequential thing anyone said this year.

Sources

Fashion Law Journal: The Horizons We Choose to Forget

CNN: The John Galliano 2027 Met Gala has been canceled

WWD: The Met’s Costume Institute Cancels John Galliano Exhibition

The Zoe Report: John Galliano Says His 2027 Met Gala Exhibit Will Not Take Place

JTA: John Galliano bows out of Met exhibition as backlash over antisemitism mounts

Yahoo News Canada: NYC Council Speaker Says Met’s Galliano Exhibit Was a “Grave Mistake”

Fashionista: John Galliano Loses Unfair Dismissal Case Against Dior and His Namesake Label

Times of Israel: John Galliano’s Journey From Hatred to Repentance

The New Arab: The Met Gala is ignoring Karl Lagerfeld’s Islamophobia and misogyny

NPR: National Gallery Delays 2 Upcoming Shows After Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Dana Thomas: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is Making a Very Bad Mistake

theJasmineBRAND: Anna Wintour Defends 2027 Met Gala Theme Honoring John Galliano

The Hollywood Reporter: Kate Moss Wears John Galliano Dress to Wedding

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty

JTA: Designer Karl Lagerfeld Slams Germany for Welcoming Jews’ ‘Worst Enemies’

The Hollywood Reporter: Karl Lagerfeld #MeToo Comments

W Magazine: A Look Back at Karl Lagerfeld’s Biggest Runway Controversies at Chanel

Highsnobiety: Why Maison Margiela SS24 Was the Best Couture Show in Years

The Horizons We Choose to Forget: What the 2027 Met Gala Says About Fashion’s Selective Memory

The post John Galliano’s Met Gala Exhibition Is Cancelled: Is There Redemption Institutions Can Actually Deliver? appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

A few weeks ago, my colleagues and I visited a local fair, and after 2 long hours surrounded by baked goods, the aroma of coffee, lines of shoes and clothes, handmade articles, and the cigarette smell that my hair took back home, I caved in and bought a mushroom-shaped candle holder and told my colleagues that it felt whimsical. I was not shopping for clothes that day. I did not need a candle holder either. I later confessed I wanted to experiment with being whimsical for an article.

Along with the cigarette smoke on my hair, the word “Whimsy” followed me home as well. Within a week, I had rearranged a bookshelf around it, started drying flowers upside down on a piece of string, and begun describing my own free Sunday mornings as whimsical, as if a mood could be scheduled. The thing is, I never tried on a puff-sleeve dress, nor have I ever searched for a fairy-core outfit. The word whimsy did the work clothes used to do, and it did that work everywhere at once, in my kitchen, on my windowsill, in the caption I wrote under a photo of tea I did not particularly enjoy making.

When a Trend Comes with a Uniform

Fashion has trained us to expect a trend to arrive with instructions. Cottagecore started on Tumblr in 2018, and two years later a pandemic that had everyone staring at their own four walls pushed it into the mainstream. Tumblr posts tagged cottagecore rose 150% between March and May 2020 alone. Somehow, the aesthetic came with a rather specific shopping list: puff sleeves, gingham, milkmaid necklines, a prairie dress you could picture baking bread in. It spread into home decor magazines, which photographed sun-bleached linens and dried wildflowers as if they were reporting the news, and Taylor Swift released two albums that looked and sounded like the word. Cottagecore looked like something specific, and everyone knew exactly what that something was.

Mob wife worked the same way, only faster. Kayla Trivieri, a creator, posted a video on January 6, 2024, that defined winter’s aesthetic in a single afternoon. Fur coats and gold jewellery became the uniform overnight. Even people who did not smoke carried a cigarette like a prop, because the look called for one. Trivieri’s video passed one million views, and the hashtag mobwife crossed 100 million views within weeks. Nobody had to guess what a mob wife wore. The look told you exactly what to buy and exactly when you had bought enough.

Clean girl arrived first, in late 2021, and by 2022 it had become its own category on Google Trends. It grew out of the earlier ‘that girl” trend and came with a routine as strict as any uniform: slicked-back buns, a five-step skincare regimen, matcha instead of coffee, pilates instead of running. Black and Brown women had worn the same slicked-back hairstyles and brown lip liner for years and heard the word trashy. White creators popularised the identical look a few years later and heard the word aspirational instead. The double standard mattered because it proved the aesthetic had a shape specific enough to steal.

Whimsy and Chic Do Not Play by The Same Rules

Whimsy and chic do not have a shape. That is the difference, and it changes what the words are asking of us. I have written about how fast a microtrend can rise and fall, but a mood word does not behave like a microtrend at all. A microtrend still tells you what to wear. A mood word tells you what to become.

Search interest in the word whimsy rose 400% this spring, and the hashtag whimsical alone carries close to 529,000 TikTok posts. Scroll through them and you will find no single silhouette repeating. Whimsy has attached itself to candles, bedazzling, rolling down a hill, “whimsymaxxing”, colourful rooms, unique pet accessories, thrifted home goods; categories that have nothing to do with a dress code and everything to do with a disposition. Small business marketing guides now list whimsy as a defined branding strategy for 2026. The word has stopped describing a look and started describing an entire personality that a company can license.

Chic tells a stranger version of the same story. Search traffic for the word hit its highest point since 2004 this year, even as sentiment analysis of the term fell 14% every month starting in March, according to the fashion data account @databutmakeitfashion. People are typing the word more than ever while trusting it less than ever. A word that once meant a very specific, very earned kind of restraint now attaches itself just as easily to AI poster fatigue.

A Word Has No Stop Sign

A look word tells you what to buy and where the spending stops, like puff sleeves or fur coats. A mood word gives you no edge to stop at, because a personality has no natural size. If chic can describe a candle and whimsy can describe a rug, buying into either one is never really finished. The wardrobe was only ever the entry fee. The rest of the bill comes due in your kitchen, your bookshelf, your captions, and eventually your entire understanding of who you are on a given Tuesday.

What Happens When the Whimsy Mood Passes?

Moods pass faster than most people can afford to keep up with them. Global secondhand apparel sales grew 13% last year while sales of new clothing stayed almost flat, and the American resale market is now growing four times faster than traditional retail. The company projects the global secondhand market will reach $393 billion by 2030. ThredUp’s chief executive James Reinhart has compared the shift to the slow rise of off-price retailers like TJ Maxx, which existed quietly for decades before a financial crisis finally made discount shopping feel less like a compromise and more like common sense. Whimsy will have its own version of that reckoning. The mushroom candle holder does not stay whimsical forever. Eventually it becomes inventory.

Mine is still on my shelf, for now. But today, I described it out loud to a friend as a bit much. Not whimsical, and definitely not chic. Just a bit much, sitting where a word used to be.

The post The Mood Economy: What “Whimsy” and “Chic” Really Cost Us appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

A 3x state champion, 3x Jr. Olympics fencer, and current men’s epee competitor training toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Butler founded TAB DEPT to fill a gap he had spent his entire competitive career staring at: a sport with centuries of history and elegance, and nothing resembling a real brand behind it.

For Tylen, what started as a personal frustration has become something far more ambitious: a self-funded, founder-led label that has moved from athletic wear into streetwear and now toward luxury, building manufacturing relationships across Italy, Spain, and Dubai along the way, all while he retains creative control over every part of the process, from design to photography to the trademark filings protecting it.

Rather than paraphrase his story, we wanted readers to hear it directly from him: the origin, the philosophy behind Be En Garde, the legal groundwork behind protecting an idea in a category with no precedent, and where he sees TAB DEPT heading next. What follows is Tylen Butler, in his own words.

The Origin Story

Could you tell us the story behind TAB DEPT and what inspired you to create the world’s first fencing apparel brand?

As a kid, I was always into fashion and design. I even won a few awards for taking first place in fundraising events at my church lol. And when I was around 9 to 12, I used to burn my own Christmas playlist mix CDs and sell them to people so I’d have funds to buy my family gifts for Christmas. So I’ve always had that business mindset. Around 8 or 9, I sewed my dad a shirt and my mom a bag. Definitely wasn’t my best work lol, but it was something I was proud of, and something I think they still have.

Fast forward years down the line, I started fencing at 13, pretty late compared to most fencers I knew growing up, and now. I played a lot of sports before that: fútbol, basketball, swim, tennis, football, a lot of what you’d call the “mainstream” sports. But in my first-ever fencing tournament, I placed first, and I stuck with it ever since.

I always wanted to represent my sport, but there was literally nothing out there that was a real brand. Only random Etsy sellers with a shirt that said “fencing” across the chest, or “en garde” lol. It definitely wasn’t fashionable. No real fencers were buying that, let alone someone who doesn’t know one thing about the sport. And it honestly always bothered me. Fencing is one of the oldest sports in the world, and there was nothing.

Fencing apparel was essentially an unclaimed category in luxury fashion before TAB DEPT. What made you see that gap, and why did you decide to fill it?

It’s nothing new; fencing has been used in creative marketing campaigns for years by all kinds of brands. But that’s all it ever was, a placement. None of those brands knew anything about fencing, and I doubt anyone behind them ever fenced themselves. I believe it’s more authentic for a luxury fashion brand in this space to be built by a real creative who’s also a real fencer. Fencing is already elegant on its own, so the fit was already there.

TAB DEPT exists at the intersection of streetwear, athletic performance, and luxury fashion. How do you balance these three elements in both your design philosophy and your brand strategy?

When I started the brand, I told everyone who was interested in what I was building that it would come in stages. Starting with athletic wear, because at the end of the day fencing is a sport, and I wanted fencers and other athletes to be able to rep it in style and be comfortable. As that grew, we merged into more streetwear-driven projects, so people who aren’t necessarily athletes but are into streetwear could wear it too. And lastly, luxury, which is the end goal, and where we’re headed now. That’s where the heavy hitters come in, the pieces I’ve been working on for a long time. So many ideas and mock-ups you wouldn’t even believe. But good things take time, and I can’t drop everything at once.

You can see all three living together in the current work. MASQUE is our signature print, built from an original photograph I took of fencing mask mesh. COQUILLE is our tote, PLASTRON is our billfold, both named after actual fencing terminology, because the language of the sport is French and I wanted the brand to speak it properly rather than just borrow the aesthetic.

“The thing I love about this brand is that I’m not boxed in.”

I can move in any direction I choose, and it still covers every aspect of fencing and fashion.

Trademarks, Copyright, and Protecting an Original Idea

As a founder-designer building an independent luxury brand, you’ve navigated trademark registration and copyright protection for your original designs. Can you walk us through your IP strategy and the key decisions you made early on to protect TAB DEPT’s intellectual property? What made you see the need?

Navigating it was definitely a pain at first; I had no clue what I was doing. But after a lot of dedicated research and time, I learned the ins and outs of IP law and how important it is to protect yourself and your brand. Had to be en garde with that one lol.

If you can’t navigate it yourself, it’s important to seek help. Some attorneys will answer questions for free, point you in the right direction, or take pro bono work. It’s better to do it right the first time than waste money and time.

On the concrete side, our BE EN GARDE wordmark is now federally registered (Reg. No. 8,377,801, registered August 4, 2026), and we tracked the fencer logo mark through the process as well. For MASQUE, our signature print, I’m filing copyright as a derivative work based on my own original photograph of fencing mask mesh. That distinction mattered to me. The print isn’t a stock pattern or a licensed graphic; it comes from a photo I took myself, and protecting it that way means the ownership chain starts and ends with me.

Unfortunately, in today’s society, people are always taking other people’s ideas and claiming them as their own. I’ve noticed a few “fencing inspired” brands pop up after I started TAB DEPT, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Even someone I considered a friend started their own “fencing brand” after asking me questions about mine in the early stages: sales, ideas, future goals and claiming they wanted to invest in the brand. So yeah, this industry can be really grimy at times, and it’s hard to protect an original idea or design against both smaller brands and bigger corporations.

I have a good amount protected already, and there’s a lot more I plan to trademark and protect going forward. But as we all know, that’s costly and time-consuming on top of everything else you’re already carrying as a business owner. People love to hop on trends, but I’m not building a trend. I’m building something long-lasting, a movement. And when the so-called hype comes, I want to be as protected as I can be.

One thing I love about people, though, is

“People can smell authenticity a mile away. They support the real ones, the first creators, even when corporations and copycats take the idea and run with it.”

Building Without a Roadmap

What were the biggest challenges in building an independent brand in luxury fashion, particularly when entering a completely unclaimed category with no established players or distribution models?

Building a community is the hardest thing when there’s no community for what you’re trying to build. Thankfully, I’ve been blessed with a strong group of people and supporters who understand the brand and what I’m creating. This isn’t a trend or a fad. I’m building a long-lasting movement and community that truly resonates with the brand’s philosophy.

The other challenge is that there’s no roadmap for the operational side either. No established players in the category means no template for who to manufacture with, where, or how. I built those relationships from scratch and now have manufacturing partners in Italy, Spain, and Dubai, and we’ve shot campaigns in London, Paris, and Puglia. Figuring all that out independently, without capital and without anyone to model it after, was probably the steepest part of the climb.

It’s inspiring to watch people who had no idea what fencing even was join the movement and the conversation. But I love a challenge, and building a community basically from scratch is what motivates me every day.

Be En Garde: The Philosophy Behind the Brand

“Be En Garde”: guard your mind, heart, and spirit from negativity and outside influences, to be ready, to be prepared. How does this core belief shape TAB DEPT’s brand identity, your design decisions, and your approach to building the company?

Yes, I’m selling apparel, but it’s more than that. I believe what you represent is important, and what you wear is just as important.

Some people just make clothes for money, because it seems cool, because it’s trendy, because they think it’s a get-rich-quick scheme (far from the truth lol). A lot of brands have no real meaning behind them. It’s just clothes. No original story, no design language, no purpose.

“What does this brand make you feel? How do you feel when you’re wearing it? What does what I’m wearing represent?”

Those are the questions I asked myself before creating this brand. I knew I didn’t want it to be generic. I knew I wanted something long-lasting that anyone could remember, relate to, and carry with them wherever they go, and that ties directly to fencing.

Be En Garde is the foundation of everything. It’s important that we’re on guard against negative people, comments, influences, and thoughts. Be on guard in every aspect of your life. Be ready for whatever comes next. Be prepared when the next opportunity arrives. Be on guard against anything or anyone that keeps you from your goals.

Designing as an Athlete, for Athletes

You are actively training toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics in men’s epee. How does your athlete’s perspective inform your design process, product development, and understanding of what your customers actually need in fencing apparel?

So important, you don’t even understand how many times I wished I had a specific fit, piece, or material as an athlete. My friends who compete had the same complaints about certain gear. I make things I would actually wear, and I never make anything I wouldn’t. As a designer and CEO, selling a product you wouldn’t use yourself makes no sense to me lol.

Every piece you create comes from a founder’s hands-on involvement in design and brand building. Why has maintaining that level of creative control and direct involvement remained non-negotiable for TAB DEPT?

Very important. We take the quality of our pieces seriously and make sure we partner with the right people and manufacturers to put out something that actually lasts. I’ve always been quality over quantity, and I’ll carry that with this brand forever. I never want to be in a position where I’m choosing quantity over quality and lowering the brand’s standards.

On the creative side, I still do all of it myself. Creative direction, photography, videography, graphic design, the website, all of it. Part of that is practical; I launched this without outside capital, so early on there simply wasn’t a choice. But it’s stayed that way because the vision lives in my head and every hand it passes through is a chance for it to get diluted. When I shoot a campaign, I already know what it’s supposed to feel like before the camera comes out. That’s hard to brief to someone else.

I’ll bring people in as we grow; that’s necessary. But the final decision and the direction stay with me. That’s non-negotiable.

How do you build and nurture community around TAB DEPT, especially within the fencing world? What does that relationship between athlete, brand, and consumer look like for you?

Honestly, just be real and authentic, and I do that the best way I know how. I love hearing feedback from customers. It’s super important. You have to listen to the people who support you. I’m a consumer myself, and I’d want the businesses I support to have that same level of care, respect, and attention to detail. I’ve been the customer looking in from the outside, so I know exactly how I’d want a brand I support to operate.

We also recently signed our first sponsored athlete, which was a real milestone for me. It’s not just a logo placement. It’s about building an actual ecosystem where the brand and the athletes competing in this sport grow together, rather than the brand just borrowing the sport’s imagery and giving nothing back.

What Comes Next

Looking ahead, what does scaling TAB DEPT look like, and how do you plan to preserve the brand’s independence and founder-led identity as demand grows?

Looking ahead is exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. I know for a fact this brand will be a multi-million, if not billion-dollar brand. I know the brand’s potential, and I know my own.

I hate to lose more than I like to win. I know the dedication, hard work, and sacrifices I’ve made and will keep making; and we’re just getting started. I’m the type of person who’s going to figure it out no matter what, even if I have to do it alone. But I’ve been blessed with a great circle and people like yourself who believe in the brand, the vision, and the world I’m creating.

There’s a lot more coming: tighter, more focused fencing-driven designs, shoes, suits, dresses, jewelry, bags. I’m excited to start rolling those out when the time is right.

I most likely will never sell this brand, because I don’t think anyone has the vision I have for it. I’ll welcome investors, of course, but I’d hate to lose creative control and final say and watch someone push it in a direction it was never meant to go. So

“authenticity, creativity, and relationships will be the key to a successful TAB DEPT.”

What advice would you give to other athlete-founders or independent designers hoping to build a globally recognised luxury brand in a niche space without giving up creative control?

Be real to you, your own journey, and your own ideas. The road may be long and difficult, but it’s YOURS. No one has the ideas, drive, passion, or story you have. Don’t be artificial, and don’t allow anything artificial into your creative process or your space.

Keep grinding regardless of how it looks right now, regardless of whether “friends” or “family” support you. Your supporters will come if you keep going.

Believe me, there are plenty of people I know, and so-called friends, who have never supported the brand or offered a word of encouragement or advice. People who just watch and say nothing. But you can’t take that to heart. You just learn how to move.

I’ve learned to put my energy into the people who do support instead of the ones who don’t. I actually keep track of everything, so I know who to bring with me and bless as I grow. From some of the first purchases, to the first follows, to the people who expressed genuine interest early. I look forward to blessing the people who believed in me and the brand before the hype, the recognition, and the articles.

And let’s say you only have a few supporters right now. That’s just fewer people you have to bring up with you when you make it lol.

What’s the next chapter for TAB DEPT, and how does the vision evolve as the brand matures?

Long term, I see multiple storefronts: Charlotte, NYC, Cali, the major cities across America, then Italy, Paris, Cairo, Lagos, Casablanca. You name it, I want TAB DEPT there.

I also want this brand to introduce the incredible sport of fencing to people who’ve never touched it. Our own fencing events, shows, competitions, partnerships. I want us at NYFW & our own runway shows.

When you think fencing, sword fighting, duels, protecting yourself, being en garde, I want you to think TAB DEPT. We’re building a whole stage, a whole world of its own, and I want people to be part of the movement.

“No matter how long it takes, one day, no matter where you go, you’ll see TAB DEPT. Our logo, our symbol, our philosophy.

Be En Garde. Not Just a Brand. A Movement.”

A First Look: TAB DEPT FW’26

While this piece was already underway, Tylen let us in on something not yet public: an early look at pieces from TAB DEPT’s upcoming FW’26 collection. The designs carry through everything he described throughout this conversation: fencing-driven, deliberately unhurried, and built the same way everything at TAB DEPT is built, entirely in-house, with Tylen behind the direction of every shot. What follows is an exclusive first look at a handful of pieces ahead of the wider reveal.

The post In Conversation With Tylen Butler: The Olympic-Bound Fencer Who Built the World’s First Fencing Apparel Brand and the IP Strategy Behind It appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

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The Narrative: Two halves of the same dream. First, the brash Pirate and Sailor playing on the rocks. Second, the solitary Mermaid, washed ashore and haunting a desolate beach house. Both share one DNA: fun, strange, and utterly glamorous.

In the first part, the pool is a surreal stage. The visual language is Jean-Daniel Lorieux: unexpected object, theatrical framing (cropped, graphic, slightly off-kilter), and a storytelling tension that asks: why is that here? The colors pop. The world is strange and humorous.

The model is pure Guy Bourdin: sensual, knowing, still. Her posing is deliberate, almost cold in its confidence. There is an erotic charge in the way she holds a rope, or lets water drip down her, or plays with a seashell. She is an 80s magazine character: untouchable, glossy, aware of her own power.

In the second part, she plays an unhinged creature of myth. She has broken into a derelict house. The furniture is abandoned yet still shiny, holding onto a strange glamour that refuses to die.

She is curious. She is trying on human objects (old perfume bottles, jewellery that are timeless) with the awkward, sensual strangeness of a creature who just learned how legs work, floating on a piano-boat as the house floods. This is the Bourdin half: beautiful, uncomfortable, and deeply surreal.

The post Miss Sixty Fall Editorial: A Vintage Surrealist Fantasy in Glamour appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

This year, the announcement for the Met Gala’s 2027 theme landed differently. On 31^st July, the Costume Institute revealed that its spring 2027 exhibition will be “John Galliano: Horizons,” a full-career retrospective of the British designer whose talent once defined an era of fashion, and unfortunately, whose fall from grace nearly ended it. Only two other living designers have received this honour: Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017. Galliano now joins that rarefied list, and the internet has questions.

For those who need a refresher, or perhaps have simply tried to forget, or it’s just breaking news: in 2011, footage surfaced of Galliano, then creative director of Dior, launching into antisemitic and racist tirades at a Paris café. He professed his love for Hitler and targeted fellow patrons with slurs. After that incident, Dior swiftly fired him. He was then dropped by his own eponymous label. His punishment extended beyond the fashion industry. In September of 2011, Galliano was convicted of hate crimes by a French court. He was then fined €6,000, which would be about a whopping $8,300 today. His career, which was once seemingly untouchable, collapsed within days.

Now, sixteen years later, the Met wants to give him a solo show… let’s talk about that doozy.

Anna Wintour, never one to dodge a headline, addressed the decision directly. “He’s a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment,” she said, “something that he will live with for the rest of his life.” The Met has promised the exhibition “won’t shy away from any of the darkness in John’s past” and will “grapple with all of it,” including what the museum itself has termed the “rupture caused by his antisemitic, racist, and anti-Asian conduct.” Wintour stated, “There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano.”

It’s a careful choice of words. Rupture, not redemption. Reckoning, not rehabilitation. The Met seems to understand it is walking a tightrope, and the backlash suggests plenty of people think it’s already lost its footing; and rightly so.

I find myself thinking less about whether Galliano deserves this moment, and more about what our reaction reveals about how selectively we extend grace within fashion. This industry has never struggled to forgive talent. It has simply been very particular about whose talent earns forgiveness, and on what or whose timeline.

Consider how quickly fashion rehabilitates the men behind the clothes when the clothes are beautiful enough. Consider how differently that grace flows when the person seeking it holds less power, less prestige, fewer decades of genius already banked in the cultural ledger. Galliano gets a Costume Institute retrospective. A young designer caught in a single controversial tweet might never work again (cancel culture, amiright?). Basically, the industry’s memory isn’t short; it’s just selective. And it tends to remember loyalty to talent far more vividly than it remembers harm to the people that talent targeted.

There is also something particularly fashion about the framing itself: horizons. Forward movement. A gaze fixed determinedly ahead rather than on what’s directly behind. It’s a word chosen, I suspect, to signal growth without quite requiring the discomfort of dwelling. Whether an exhibition can hold both artistic celebration and honest reckoning within the same walls, without the reckoning becoming mere décor around the real spectacle, remains to be seen.

What strikes me most is the confidence (and audacity) of doing this at the Met Gala: an event built entirely on spectacle, celebrity, and carefully engineered desirability. This is not a quiet academic symposium on accountability in fashion. It is the industry’s most photographed night, livestreamed to millions, where a designer’s darkest chapter will share the same room as sequins, champagne, and the year’s most-discussed red carpet looks. Whatever reckoning the Met promises will have to compete with flashbulbs.

Perhaps that tension is precisely the point. Fashion has always been an uneasy vessel for moral clarity. It sells artistic transformation and reinvention as its core products, so of course it would eventually be drawn to the ultimate reinvention story:

a genius who fell, and now, apparently, rises again.

The industry loves nothing more than a comeback narrative; especially one it gets to beautifully script, curate, and light.

But redemption arcs work best between the pages of a fiction novel, where the writer controls every variable and every lens, including how much the audience is allowed to forget. In reality, redemption is messier, and in the real world, people notice well-placed Mandela Effects. Redemption requires the people who were harmed to have a voice in the process, and not just the institution doing the honouring. It requires consequences that meaningfully preceded the comeback, not simply time passing while talent waited quietly in the wings. Whether Galliano’s sixteen years since 2011 constitute genuine accountability, or simply a long enough pause for public memory to soften, is a question the exhibition itself will have to answer, and one no press release can settle in advance.

What the 2027 Met Gala theme ultimately reveals isn’t really about Galliano at all. It’s about us, and what we’re willing to overlook when genius is on offer.

Fashion has always been a mirror for the values, anxieties, and contradictions of its moment. And this choice reflects one of the industry’s oldest, most uncomfortable truths: talent has always bought forgiveness faster than character ever could.

Whether that’s a truth we’re finally ready to sit with, or one we’ll simply admire from the red carpet, we’ll find out come May.

The post The Horizons We Choose to Forget: What the 2027 Met Gala Says About Fashion’s Selective Memory appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

The Design at the Centre of the Dispute

According to the complaint, 7-Eleven has used its “7-ELEVEN” name and logo in commerce since at least 1946, and has specifically used the combination of orange, green and red stripes, which it calls the “Tri-Color Mark,” for nearly forty years, with the complaint citing a first use date of January 1987 for one of the underlying registrations. The filing lists five federal trademark registrations said to cover the Tri-Color Mark and the wider 7-ELEVEN branding,  with registration dates running from 1998 to 2016, and notes that several additional registrations also protect the brand’s colour scheme across categories including clothing, footwear, headwear and golf balls. The complaint states that these registrations are incontestable, meaning they carry a heightened legal presumption of validity that would be difficult for Nike to challenge on its merits. 7-Eleven also points to its own history of licensed apparel and footwear collaborations, including with Crocs, Sunday Golf, Breezy Golf and skate brand DGK, as evidence that consumers already associate the tri-colour palette with officially sanctioned 7-Eleven products.

The shoe at issue is the Air Max 95 “Big Bubble” in the “Sport Green and Safety Orange” colourway, priced at $200 and, according to a screenshot of Nike’s SNKRS app included as an exhibit to the complaint, scheduled for release on 11 July 2026 at 10 a.m., a date that falls on what 7-Eleven calls “7-Eleven Day,” the retailer’s annual free Slurpee promotion built around the 7/11 date. 7-Eleven says it first became aware of the shoe in mid-June 2026, and the complaint attaches several pieces of unsolicited sneaker press coverage from outlets including Sole Retriever, Sneaker News, Women’s Wear Daily, Complex, Style Rave and Highsnobiety, which had already described the design using terms such as “instantly recognizable,” “unmistakable,” “signature” and “iconic.”

A Highsnobiety headline reproduced in the complaint runs “Nike’s 7-Eleven Air Max Is a 24/7 Textural Treat,” and a Sneaker News headline reads “7-Eleven Inspires This Upcoming Nike Air Max 95.” Separately, the complaint alleges that third-party product listings referred to the sneaker outright as “the ‘7-Eleven’ shoe,” and that at least one consumer had already purchased a pair through a third-party website before the official launch.

7-Eleven’s Legal Claims, in Plain English

The complaint pleads seven counts in total, but they really come down to two ideas repeated across federal and Texas law. The first idea is confusion: would an ordinary shopper browsing the Air Max 95 assume that 7-Eleven made it, licensed it, or signed off on it in some way? That question sits behind the complaint’s federal claims for unfair competition and false designation of origin under Lanham Act Section 43(a) (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)) and for trademark infringement under Section 32(1) (15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)), and behind its Texas-law equivalents, common law trademark infringement and unfair competition, and statutory infringement under Texas Business and Commerce Code Section 16.102(b).

The second idea is dilution, which works differently and does not require anyone to be confused about who actually made the shoe. Instead, it asks whether Nike has cheapened the specialness of 7-Eleven’s colours simply by putting them on an unrelated product, loosening the tight, decades-built link in shoppers’ minds between orange, green and red stripes and 7-Eleven specifically. That theory underpins the complaint’s federal dilution claim under Section 43(c) (15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)) and its Texas-law counterpart under Section 16.103, along with a related Texas claim for unfair competition by misappropriation, which argues Nike is unfairly benefiting from the time and money 7-Eleven spent building that association in the first place.

Throughout the complaint, 7-Eleven’s lawyers describe Nike’s conduct in unusually strong terms, calling it “a callous and malicious disregard for 7-Eleven’s rights” and alleging that Nike acted “knowingly, willfully, intentionally, and maliciously.” That is not just colourful language for the reader’s benefit; it is doing legal work. If a court agrees that Nike knew what it was doing, 7-Eleven can ask for its damages to be trebled and Nike’s profits enhanced under the Lanham Act, rather than being limited to whatever losses it can actually prove.

Prior Negotiations and Nike’s Position

The complaint states that 7-Eleven “repeatedly contacted Nike to attempt to resolve this dispute” before filing suit, and that despite multiple communications between the parties, Nike indicated it intended to continue advertising the shoe and to proceed with the 7/11 launch. Nike had not filed a public response as of this writing. Some sneaker and trade outlets have separately reported that Nike pulled the Air Max 95 listing from its SNKRS app following the lawsuit, though Fashion Law Journal has not independently verified that action against Nike’s own statements and treats it as a developing detail worth confirming as the case progresses.

What 7-Eleven Wants the Court to Do

What 7-Eleven is asking for breaks down into two clusters. The first is about stopping the shoe altogether: a permanent injunction barring Nike from advertising, marketing or selling the Air Max 95 or anything else carrying a confusingly similar imitation of the Tri-Color Mark, plus an order forcing Nike to recall whatever has already reached stores and destroy any remaining shoes, signage or promotional material. The second is about paying for the harm already done: an accounting of whatever profit Nike made on the shoe, 7-Eleven’s actual damages, and, because the complaint argues Nike knew exactly what it was doing, damages trebled and profits enhanced under the Lanham Act, on top of exemplary damages under Texas law, attorneys’ fees, costs and interest. 7-Eleven has also demanded a jury trial, so if the case runs its full course, these questions would ultimately be decided by a jury rather than a judge alone.

Can a Colour Combination Really Function as a Trademark?

The case turns on a principle that often surprises people outside fashion and IP law, which is that trademark protection is not limited to names and logos and can, in the right circumstances, extend to colour itself. The foundational authority is the US Supreme Court’s 1995 decision in Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., 514 U.S. 159, which held that a single colour can serve as a valid trademark once it has acquired what lawyers call secondary meaning, meaning that consumers have come to associate that colour specifically with one company’s goods, and provided the colour is not functional, that is, it does not serve some practical purpose that competitors need to be free to use. Fashion has its own well-known example in Christian Louboutin S.A. v. Yves Saint Laurent America Holdings, Inc., in which the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September 2012 that Louboutin’s red-lacquered outsole was a valid and enforceable trademark, though the court limited that protection to soles that contrast with a shoe’s upper, denying Louboutin the ability to stop a monochrome red YSL shoe.

7-Eleven’s case follows the same logic but applies it to a combination of three colours arranged in a specific stripe pattern rather than a single hue. The complaint leans heavily on the fact that several of the underlying registrations are incontestable, a status available under the Lanham Act once a mark has been in continuous use for five years after registration and the required affidavits have been filed, and one that limits the grounds on which a defendant can challenge the mark’s validity. Whether 7-Eleven can show the kind of consumer recognition and non-functionality that colour-based marks require will likely be a central battleground if the case proceeds past the pleading stage, alongside the more conventional question of whether an ordinary sneaker buyer would actually mistake an Air Max 95 for a 7-Eleven-branded product.

What Comes Next

With the shoe’s planned release date falling just days after the complaint was filed, the practical stakes for both companies are immediate, and 7-Eleven’s request for a preliminary injunction, if it presses for one, would likely be the first substantive hearing in the case. Fashion Law Journal will continue to follow the docket in 7-Eleven, Inc. v. Nike, Inc., for developments including Nike’s answer or any motion to dismiss.

The post 7-Eleven Sues Nike Over Air Max 95 Sneaker, Alleging Its “Tri-Color Mark” Was Copied for a 7/11 Release appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.

The Lawsuit: “Art of Luxury” Bags at the Centre of a Trademark Fight

In a 29‑page complaint filed June 1, 2026, Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A.S. sued PPE Casino Resorts Maryland, LLC (which does business as Live! Casino & Hotel), its parent The Cordish Companies, Inc., and several unidentified entities, alleging willful trademark counterfeiting, trademark infringement, false association, trademark dilution, and unfair competition under Maryland common law.

The suit focuses on an April 2026 promotion at the casino in Hanover, Maryland, called “The Art of Luxury,” which offered loyalty members a “luxury bag collection” of four items—a handbag, toiletry case, backpack, and tote. According to Louis Vuitton, those bags copied the fashion house’s famous monogram canvas and stylised flower trademarks, but swapped out the overlapping “LV” initials for the word “Live!” in a repeating pattern.

The complaint characterises this as “a particularly brazen move” designed to “purposefully infringe” Louis Vuitton’s monogram and “falsely convey to the consuming public” that the casino and the luxury brand were affiliated or collaborating. Local news outlets have published side‑by‑side photographs showing the casino’s promotional bags next to authentic Louis Vuitton products, with logos and flower motifs that appear strikingly similar.

How the “Art of Luxury” Promotion Allegedly Worked

Louis Vuitton alleges that the April campaign was a coordinated, multi‑week mass marketing effort pitched to casino rewards members and prospective customers through direct mail, in‑house brochures, and social media posts.

Promotional materials invited players to “receive your complimentary luxury bag collection,” with different pieces of the set available on successive Tuesdays in April at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland. According to the complaint, patrons could either attend on designated days to collect the bags or redeem “tier credits” amassed through gambling, dining, and retail spending for the casino‑branded collection.

One social media post cited in the lawsuit shows a model posing with the bag set under the caption, “Everyone needs a place to store all their jackpot money… so why not a stylish bag?” and urges members to “earn 750 tier credits for your luxury bag collection.” At no point, Louis Vuitton says, did the casino disclose that the bags were not genuine Louis Vuitton products or that no affiliation existed between the two companies.

Louis Vuitton’s IP: The Monogram and Flower Marks at Issue

Central to the case are several of Louis Vuitton’s most recognisable trademarks: the Monogram Design (the classic LV logo combined with three stylised flower motifs), a related “Décor Florale” pattern using only the flowers, and the individual flower designs themselves.

These marks—first registered in the United States as early as 1932 and now incontestable under the Lanham Act—cover a wide range of leather goods, including handbags, luggage, wallets, and accessories. Louis Vuitton emphasises in its complaint that it has invested “millions of dollars and over a century of time and effort” to build the goodwill in those marks and that its products are sold only through its own boutiques, select luxury department stores, and its official e‑commerce channels.

By allegedly recreating the monogram pattern and flower devices and placing “Live!” where “LV” would normally appear, the casino’s promotion “kept the entirety of the famous Louis Vuitton Monogram Design intact with one exception,” Louis Vuitton argues, thereby creating a counterfeit design that is “identical with, or substantially indistinguishable from” the registered marks.

From “Art of Luxury” to “Endless Elegance”: A Second Campaign

Louis Vuitton says it sent a cease‑and‑desist letter to the casino on April 15, 2026, demanding an immediate halt to the “Art of Luxury” promotion and an accounting of the number of bags produced and distributed. The complaint alleges that the casino indicated two days later that it would stop distributing the promotional bags but did not provide the requested information or alert Louis Vuitton to its next planned marketing initiative.

According to the lawsuit, the next phase came just weeks later in May 2026, when Live! Casino launched a new promotion called “Endless Elegance.” This campaign, publicised on the casino’s website and in print mailers, offered patrons the chance to win what were described as authentic Louis Vuitton handbags, backpacks, duffle bags, jewellery, sunglasses, hats, belts, wallets, and fragrances as part of a “luxury French collection,” with drawings scheduled for May 29 and 30.

Louis Vuitton alleges that this second promotion, coming on the heels of the allegedly infringing bag giveaway, was “a blatant continuation of the same false association” created by the first campaign. Even if the prizes in the May drawing were genuine Louis Vuitton goods, the company claims, using them as casino giveaways after the April promotion only further conditioned consumers to believe the casino had some sort of partnership, sponsorship, or endorsement from Louis Vuitton.

Legal Theories: Counterfeiting, Infringement, False Association, and Dilution

On the federal side, Louis Vuitton brings four Lanham Act claims: trademark counterfeiting, trademark infringement, false association/false designation of origin, and trademark dilution.

The counterfeiting and infringement claims focus on the April “Art of Luxury” bags, which Louis Vuitton says incorporate spurious designations that are “identical with, or substantially indistinguishable from” its protected monogram and flower marks. Because the casino allegedly used those marks in connection with the advertisement and distribution of goods for its own commercial gain, the fashion house argues that the case qualifies as “exceptional” and warrants heightened statutory damages.

The false association claim targets both the April and May promotions, arguing that the combined effect of the two campaigns was to create “the false impression that Defendants are connected, affiliated or related in some way” to Louis Vuitton. The complaint emphasises that Louis Vuitton never licensed or authorised the casino to use its trademarks and has no partnership or sponsorship arrangement with Live! Casino or its parent companies.

On dilution, Louis Vuitton contends that its marks are among “the most famous and distinctive trademarks in the world” and that the casino’s use of similar patterns on promotional bags, as well as on mass‑market casino advertising, both blur the distinctiveness of its marks and tarnish their reputation by associating them with a casino giveaway context.

Maryland Unfair Competition Claim

In addition to its federal causes of action, Louis Vuitton asserts a common‑law unfair competition claim under Maryland law. The complaint alleges that the casino and its affiliates “palmed off” their own products as those of Louis Vuitton, improperly trading on the brand’s goodwill and creating the impression of a non‑existent affiliation.

Louis Vuitton further alleges that the casino’s actions were willful and undertaken “in conscious disregard” of its rights, which could support an award of punitive or exemplary damages under state law.

Relief Sought: Destruction of Bags, Corrective Advertising, and Millions in Damages

Louis Vuitton is seeking broad injunctive and monetary relief. Among other remedies, the complaint asks the court to:

• Enjoin the casino and related entities from using any reproduction or imitation of Louis Vuitton’s trademarks in future promotions;

• Order the recall and destruction of all allegedly infringing bags, promotional materials, and advertisements; and

• Require a “fulsome corrective advertising campaign” informing customers that the casino’s promotional bags were not authentic Louis Vuitton products and that no relationship exists between the parties.

On the monetary side, Louis Vuitton seeks the defendants’ profits, its own damages, and costs, or, in the alternative, statutory damages of up to 2 million dollars per counterfeit mark per type of goods, along with treble or enhanced damages and an award of attorneys’ fees based on the alleged willfulness.

Procedural Posture: Early Days in a High-Profile IP Case

The case, captioned Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A.S. v. PPE Casino Resorts Maryland LLC, et al., has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, the chief judge of the District of Maryland. Court records and local reporting indicate that, as of early June, Live! Casino and its parent companies had not yet filed a formal response and have until later in the month to do so.

News outlets covering the suit report that the casino declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations. No hearing dates have yet been set on Louis Vuitton’s requested preliminary injunctive relief, and the defendants have not publicly outlined any defences.

Why the Louis Vuitton v. Live! Casino Case Matters for Fashion and Promotions

For brand owners and marketers alike, the lawsuit is a textbook example of the risks of designing promotions around “inspired by” product lines and high‑end branding cues without a license. Louis Vuitton’s complaint frames the casino’s conduct not as a one‑off misstep, but as a “multi‑step initiative” in which look‑alike promotional bags allegedly softened the ground for a second campaign featuring genuine Louis Vuitton products, cumulatively reinforcing the impression of a relationship.

From a fashion‑law perspective, the case sits at the intersection of counterfeiting, dilution, and false endorsement: the April promotion allegedly used counterfeit‑like designs, while the May “Endless Elegance” giveaway shows how even authentic goods can be deployed in ways that raise false‑association concerns when there is no underlying sponsorship agreement.

Given Louis Vuitton’s history of aggressively policing its IP, and the serious statutory damages available for willful counterfeiting, the Maryland Live! The case will be closely watched as it proceeds, both by luxury brands wary of unauthorised co‑branding and by casinos, retailers, and loyalty programs that rely heavily on themed giveaways to drive customer traffic.

The post Louis Vuitton Sues Maryland Live! Casino in High-Stakes Trademark and Counterfeiting Dispute appeared first on Fashion Law Journal.