Look around. The use of non-compete agreements has been on the rise, and the fashion industry is hardly immune. It was this specific contract provision that was at the center of the lawsuit that Hedi Slimane filed against initiated a lawsuit against YSL's parent company Kering in June 2016. The same goes for the ugly battle between rivals Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera in late 2016, and the war that Nike waged against 3 high-level creatives who jumped ship to adidas before that. Still yet, it was an ironclad non-complete that prevented Raf Simons from making a swift transition from his role as creative director of Christian Dior to the top position at Calvin Klein, and former Celine CEO, Marco Gobbetti, to Burberry. 

Online dating is a messy business as far as court dockets across the U.S. are concerned. On the heels of initiating a billion dollar his-and-hers legal battle with rival Bumble, Tinder filed a similarly hard-hitting lawsuit on Tuesday against parent companies Match Group and IAC/InterActiveCorp, alleging that they manipulated financial information as part of an "illicit" and "dishonest" scheme to “steal” billions of dollars from Tinder’s executives, including the popular dating app's co-founders, Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, and Jonathan Badeen.

On Monday morning, the New York Post was sold out in many locations across the city by about 7am. “The rush on The Post after a relatively quiet August weekend had nothing to do with the news,” wrote the New York Times’ Jonah Bromwich. Instead, it had “everything to do with” the front page of the daily New York paper, which was devoid of almost all of its usual staples. News-related imagery were nowhere to be found. Headlines had been banished. In their place was, instead, the paper’s header and Supreme’s bold box logo.  

Situated amongst a swath of olive trees, just steps away from the Aegean Sea, sits one of Louis Vuitton’s newest outposts. The Paris-based brand’s swanky seaside base in Nammos Beach joins those of Christian Dior, Gucci, Christian Louboutin, and Oscar de la Renta, all of which have opened their doors, albeit temporary, in order to court the well-heeled consumers that descended upon the Greek Island of Mykonos for a seasonal sojourn. 

Christian Louboutin’s red sole shoes are some of the most famous and easily identifiable on the planet. As of last year, 27 years after setting up shop, the Paris-based brand was selling more than 1 million pairs of its $700+ heels, sneakers, and flats, all of which bear a lacquered Chinese red sole, enabling consumers to easily distinguish its products from other shoes on the market. Yet, rights in the red sole – Louboutin’s most valuable asset, with shoes amounting for a reported 95 percent of its annual sales (which amounted to a reported $850 million in 2013) – are influx across the globe, especially India after a court issued 3 different rulings in 3 different cases over the past 9 months.

Nike’s marketing as a company that believes in female empowerment could not be further from the reality, according to a new lawsuit. Two former Nike employees filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the sportswear giant this week in an Oregon federal court, alleging that Nike has created a hostile work environment for women, who are paid less and have fewer opportunities for advancement than their male colleagues despite comparable experience and performance. And in case that is not enough, the plaintiffs claim that Nike failed to address formal sexual harassment complaints from female employees.

Fashion has, for the most part, been left out of Donald Trump’s trade war with China. It has benefited from the administration’s attempts to avoid slapping import taxes on the most consumer-facing goods, which has been a priority (for obvious reasons), but that does not mean that luxury good makers are not increasingly being brought into the fray. Beyond “Made in China” handbags being included on one of the latest lists of proposed tariff items, analysts are predicting that the U.S.-China war stands to hurt luxury goods companies where it hurts: Their valuations.

Ad spending in print magazines dropped by a whopping $400 million last year. According to the Association of Magazine Media’s annual report, spending by the top 50 marketers fell from $6.5 billion in 2016 to $6.1 billion last year, as an increasing number of companies, particularly in the fashion and luxury sectors, continue to boost spending on digital campaigns, including tapping big-name influencers to help them find favor amongst millennial and Gen-Z consumers.