Fashion brands were in and out of court in 2018 thanks to fights over their names (and others’ uses of their names), copycat designs, employment contracts, and in a select number of cases, a whole lot of stripes and pocket tabs. It is against this background that some truly high-stakes fights were underway between everyone from rival fashion week organizers to two companies both using the name “Supreme.” Here’s a look at some of the year’s most cut-throat legal battles and a few throwbacks to those of years gone by …  

You could call it a David v. Goliath fight. A small, family-owned company is taking the nearly 100-year old Bentley Motors to court over its right to exclusively manufacture and sell apparel using the Bentley name. Manchester-based Brandlogic – which has held rights in the Bentley name for use on apparel in the United Kingdom for over 30 years – is escalating the parties’ longstanding legal battle by filing suit in before an English court. 

Fashion Nova was the brand that everyone was Googling in 2018. After crunching the numbers, Google revealed its most searched-for fashion brands list for the year, and the ultra-fast fashion retailer – likely thanks to its stable of big-name endorsers and a collaboration with “it” rapper Cardi B – nabbed the top spot. Fashion Nova is not the only interesting name amongst the likes of some of the usual high fashion suspects, such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, and Moschino, though. In the number 8 position of Google’s “Year In Search” list is Fashionphile. 

Hatchimals – the interactive creatures that hatch out of colorful speckled eggs – sent parents in a flurry ahead of the 2016 holiday season. Fifteen years prior, it was Bratz dolls that had Christmas-shoppers scouring shelves. In 1998, there was a rush for the big-eyed, big-eared Furbies, and 1996 saw a marked spike in demand for the fuzzy, red Tickle Me Elmo. This year, a variation of MGA Entertainment’s hot L.O.L. Surprise! Toys is shaping up to be one of the hottest Christmas gifts. Consisting of a “Surprise Slime Kit & Carrying Case,” the toy goes by the name Pooey Puitton. 

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.