The "King of Anti-Fashion" Is in Trouble. He Just Lost in Court

Fashion loves paradoxes, but this time the irony of the situation surpassed everything we had heard in the industry corridors. The French brand Vetements lost a court battle for the right to its own name. Why? Because it is… too common.

Fashion knows many cases of lawsuits over copyright, counterfeiting, and logos. But the Vetements case is unique – because it concerns the very meaning of a word. The American court of appeals has just denied the French brand the right to register its name as a trademark . The reason? In French, "vetements" simply means "clothes." And such common and frequently used words, as American institutions have recognized, are not registered.

Vetements Shoes / Shutterstock - andersphoto

The court's decision was influenced by the so-called doctrine of foreign equivalents. It sounds like Latin to the uninitiated, but in practice it is a simple rule: if a foreign word has an equivalent in the US that is too general or descriptive, it cannot be legally protected as a trademark . And "vetements" is, according to the court, nothing more than "clothes".

The American court emphasized that French is not a particularly exotic language in the United States. There are more than two million French speakers there, and the language is high on the school curriculum – right after Spanish. That was enough to conclude that the average American customer could understand that "vetements" is simply "clothes" – something that cannot be owned by a single brand.

For Vetements Group AG , the brand's owner, this is a big blow. The company has tried to fight for registration several times – first at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, then at the Trademark Trial Board (TTAB) , and finally at the Court of Appeal. And each time the answer was the same: refusal.

Vetements has always played with convention and the boundaries of good taste. The brand, which appeared on the market in 2014, immediately gained fame thanks to its provocative designs and subversive approach to luxury. Its founders are the Gvasalia brothers - Demna , now creative director of Gucci, and Guram , who runs the brand today.

Vetements made “anti-fashion” a new trend— DHL-branded sweatshirts, giant coats, and casual dresses with a second-hand feel quickly became objects of desire, and Demna earned a reputation as a designer who can figure out fashion from the inside and mock it while creating it. That’s why the court defeat has an extra dimension for the brand—it’s like an artist learning he can’t sign his own painting because his last name means “painter.”

The court decision in the US puts Vetements in an uncomfortable position – especially in the context of the fight against counterfeiting. Without legal protection of its name in the States, the brand may have difficulty enforcing the rights to its own image and products in one of the most important markets in the world. And yet originality is Vetements' capital – but as it turns out, not everyone understands their subtle sense of humor.