FarFetch is betting big on sneakers. The newly publicly listed e-commerce site announced on Wednesday that in an effort to expand its offerings in the premier sneaker and streetwear category, it has acquired Stadium Goods for $250 million. The acquisition of New York-based Stadium Goods – which was founded in 2015 by Jed Stiller and John McPheters and describes itself as “a premium sneaker + streetwear marketplace selling only the most sought after footwear, apparel and other hard-to-find items on behalf of our sellers” – is the latest development in the increasingly buzzy luxury resale space.

Alberta Ferretti’s parent company and Italian airline Alitalia are coming under fire in Italy, with the country’s competition and anti-trust authority and a special arm of the financial police initiating an investigation into their influencer marketing practices. As first reported by Italian news outlets on Tuesday, a probe by the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (“AGCM”) with the help of the special anti-trust unit of the Guardia di Finanza is centered on a collaboration between Milan-based brand Alberta Ferretti and Alitalia, and also names influencers, such as Chiara Ferragni, who helped market the collaboration.  

With the rise in digitally native brands that are winning over hordes of millennial consumers, the widespread (but late) adoption of e-commerce by even many of the market’s more stuffy and traditionally situated luxury brands, and the Apple’s milestone of hitting a market capitalization of $1 trillion (the first American public company to do so), one of the key questions debated in 2018 was this: What does it mean to be a luxury brand now?

We are living in “the age of the trainer – or, as so many more people on the planet call it, the sneaker.” This is what Luke Leitch wrote for the Economist’s 1843 magazine this month, and he is right. The past several years, in particular, have seen fashion brands expending an increasing amount of attention and resources to building out the casual end of their footwear offerings, with a marked focus on sneakers.  

China drove significant growth in terms of the nearly 12.5 million non-domestic trademark applications that were filed last year, according to the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization’s annual report for 2017. Joining the 5.7 million domestically-filed trademark applications in China in 2017, far more than any other country in the world, the number of Chinese-filed applications seeking to protect brand names and logos outside of China grew by “prodigious” 54.4 percent compared to 2016, with Asia now accounting for 66.6 percent of the world’s trademark applications.  

Supreme is collaborating with Samsung. That is what the Korean cell phone giant declared this week at the Chinese launch for its Galaxy A8s. At Monday’s highly-anticipated event in Beijing, Samsung unveiled mid-priced mobile products equipped with the company's most advanced technologies. It also announced that is will partner with Supreme, with “Samsung China's marketing head Feng En inviting executives from the popular fashion brand on stage to talk about the marketing collaboration” against a backdrop that featured the two brands’ logos side by side. The collaboration comes ahead of what will be a roll out of Supreme stores in China beginning in 2019.

THE FASHION LAW EXCLUSIVE — Balenciaga is no longer being sued for allegedly copying the kitschy New York bag it showed for Resort 2018. You may recall that the Demna Gvasalia-helmed brand was slaughtered in a strongly worded complaint this summer when New York-based City Merchandise, Inc. accused it of running afoul of federal copyright law by “willfully, intentionally, and purposefully” ripping off one of its souvenir bags and selling a “virtually indistinguishable” version for  $2,000, as well as various pricey garments and other accessories.  

“In a way, I don’t think I am a fashion designer,” Raf Simons told the New York Times this fall. This echoed an interview he did some 10 years prior with Interview Magazine, in which he stated, "I never feel I am a fashion designer. I have even found it problematic that the world defines me as a fashion designer. To me it's more like, ‘Yes, it is what I do now,’ but it's far from my only interest, and I could see myself doing so many other things than fashion." Back in 2018, he told the Times that art, for instance, is higher up on the list of things that are “important” to him than fashion is, noting that “in fashion, the actual practice of being a designer has changed so much.”

With more than 80 percent of fashion, luxury, and beauty brands looking to influencers as a way to boost brand awareness and ideally, sales, 2018 was a significant year in the influencer marketing segment, not only in terms of the shifts that are underway (from brands looking to smaller – and sometimes computer generated – influencers to many mega-influencers opting to focus their endorsements on their own brands) but also in terms of the pushback that is coming in light of revelations of impropriety. Here are some of the key insights and developments from the past year … 

THE FASHION LAW EXCLUSIVE — Alice + Olivia is hauling Betsey Johnson and its parent company Steve Madden into court for using its founder and creative director’s face to sell a line of handbags. Despite alerting the two fashion companies of their infringing activities, New York-based Alice + Olivia (“A+O”) claims in a newly-filed copyright, trademark, and trade dress infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition lawsuit that Betsey Johnson and Steve Madden have “unfairly, unlawfully, and intentionally [sought] to copy, co-opt, and exploit a design” depicting founder Stacey Bendet’s face, and will not stop.