In fashion, runway garments are rarely the money-making products for brands. Instead, handbags and footwear, small leather goods and licensed products are the hot-sellers, and so, it is problematic that Gucci is selling a whole lot of iPhone cases complete with credit card holders on the back, according to a new lawsuit. CardShark, LLC alleges in a lawsuit filed late last month in a New York federal court that the Italian design house is running afoul of the law – patent law to be exact – by including credit card pockets on the backs of some of its hot-selling iPhone cases.

Raissa Gerona's Instagram account is jam-packed full of imagery of her dining alongside Chiara Ferragni in Milan, partying at the Ritz Paris with Julie Sarinana and Negin Mirsalehi, frolicking in front of the Eiffel Tower with Belen Hostalet, or at Coachella with Kaia Gerber, on a beach in Spain with Chriselle Lim and Camila Coelho, and sitting poolside in the Hamptons amongst a bevy of influencers, whose collective follower count almost tops 30 million. 

After quietly working with law enforcement authorities from nine European Union countries for almost a year, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation – better known as Europol – hauled more than 250 individuals into court this spring, with more to come, it says. The charges: Selling counterfeit goods, ranging from copycat designer bags to “powerful and addictive prescription drugs” to social media users. The effort, which has earned the title of the largest-ever European law enforcement operation against illegal online marketplaces selling counterfeit goods, is called “Operation Aphrodite.”

Universal Standard made headlines this spring when it brought in $7 million in funding from the likes of Imaginary Ventures (the investment fund led by Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet), Gwyneth Paltrow, and the respective founders of SoulCycle, Sweet Green, and MatchesFashion, among others. Now, the plus size womenswear brand – which was founded in 2015 by Polina Veksler and Alexandra Waldman specifically to fill the void for modern, stylish garments for women size 14 and above – is taking on the second-largest department store retailer in the United States … in court.

After staging a mock counterfeit operation on New York’s Canal Street in February as a play on the modern counterfeit trade, Diesel’s parent company OTB Group has been facing off against one such bad actor, Inditex, in court. Breganze, Italy-based OTB Group – which owns Diesel, Maison Margiela, Marni, and Viktor & Rolf, among other brands- has been embroiled in a legal battle against Zara’s parent company after initiating the matter in a Milan court in November 2015, alleging that Zara was selling counterfeit versions of legally-protected Diesel jeans and Marni footwear.

RewardStyle has “created a new industry—and a new way to look at careers and entrepreneurship,” and it is readying to sue fashion/celebrity news site for interfering with that. Less than three months after news broke that PopSugar allegedly stole millions of influencers’ photos and replaced their monetizable rewardStyle/LIKEtoKNOW.it links with affiliate links of its own, Dallas-based rewardStyle appears to be preparing to file a lawsuit against the site, filing a pre-suit deposition petition in a Texas state court late last week.

Schiaparelli made headlines in early 2017 when the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Paris in partnership with the Fédération française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode (hereinafter "Fédération française de la couture") announced that it added the Paris-based design house to the elite ranks of Paris haute couture houses. One of the most immediate implications of this, which are known to some but largely unknown to others, is that Schiaparelli – the historic brand founded by the Elsa Schiaparelli, the great rival of Coco Chanel in the 1930s – is legally able to label itself a haute couture house ... again.

Couture – much like many aspects of the fashion industry – is a game of smoke and mirrors. What Christina Binkley called a “hush-hush, mysterious, tradition-bound world,” writing for the Wall Street Journal in 2016, many couture clients tend to shy from revealing their seasonal purchases by way of interviews and brands are routinely vague as to the figures their dedicated fans shell out for these hand-crafted creations, which are made-to-order clothes for private clients.

Chinese authorities are capping the salaries of celebrities to 70, or in some cases, 40 percent of the total production cost of a project in a move to cut down on the “money worship” and “distortion of social values” that it says the entertainment industry is responsible for encouraging. But there is more to the recently-announced initiative than an attempt to rehabilitate cultural values; at least one of the five government agencies at play – China’s tax authority – is hoping to remedy the widespread reliance on an fraudulent practice that sees stars signing fake contracts in order to evade taxes.

Fashion is said to be one of the most immediate reflections of the culture at any given point in time, taking the temperature of the zeitgeist and turning out garments and accessories that capture and speak to it. This season, the front row, in a few cases, may have spoken even louder than the runway offerings. For instance, there, at the far end of the monstrously-long front row of the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2019 menswear show, easily the most anticipated event of the season, was Ian Connor.