NYC-based designer Rachel Roy has slapped the Jones Group with a $20 million lawsuit for “ruining” her eponymous womenswear label. The Jones Group, which was recently acquired by private equity firm, Sycamore Partners, bought 50% of Roy’s brand in 2008, but cut ties with the designer last month. According to Roy’s complaint, the Jones Group was “working to eviscerate her brand by abruptly shutting down its operations, firing personnel that run the business, and stonewalling all efforts by Ms. Roy to continue to conduct business.” While Roy maintained creative control of her namesake brand for the duration of her venture with Jones, she claims that Jones conducted business behind her back.

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Ever the crafty and creative designer, Johnson Hartig, the creative force behind Los Angeles-based brand, Libertine, known for its colorful wares, mixed prints, and bold graphics (all of which are hand screen printed – a technique Libertine pioneered when they launched in the early 2000′s) has issued a response to a very similarly named Danish brand that has subsequently come onto the scene. Hartig launched Libertine in 2001 and has since made a name for his menswear and womenswear brand, showing at New York Fashion Week, stocking at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Maxfield in Los Angeles, Colette in Paris, and Isetan in Tokyo – among other coveted stockists around the world, collaborating with major industry forces, and attracting the attention of an array of leading publications, as well as die hard fans that include Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Heidi Klum, and Karl Lagerfeld (who bought Hartig’s entire collaboration collection with Goyard) – just to name a few.

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No doubt you’ve heard of a little tune called “Happy” by Pharrell. It’s also likely that you’ve seen the musician and designer in the now famous over-sized hat. What you may not have seen is the “world’s longest music video” project featuring Pharrell and others dancing for 24 hours to “Happy”.  Whether the concept sounds like a good way to spend an entire day or not, there’s no denying that it has garnered a lot of attention, including that of dancer and actress Anne Marsen, who starred in a 75-minute dance film called “Girl Walk // All Day”. The 2011 project, which was released by Wild Combination, follows Marsen and two others as they dance around New York City to Girl Talk’s “All Day” album. The two music videos undeniably share a similar concept – spontaneous-looking dancing for a long period of time – but as Marsen pointed out with a short video (see it after the break below), they share more than just that. There haven’t been any whispers of a lawsuit thus far, so ours is purely a hypothetical question: are there any potential legal claims against Pharrell and company?

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