Key Takeaways
- When a designer forms a company that owns her brand, or sells that company, the trademark in her name usually belongs to the business, not to her personally.
- Whether she can later use her name in fashion or any other field depends on the name and likeness agreement she signed, and such agreements often restrict her.
- A designer can usually launch a new business under a different name, as Kate Spade did with Frances Valentine.
If a designer sells the company that bears her name, can she keep using that name in a new business? Can she open another fashion line under it, or even sell something completely different?
In this TalksOnLaw Brief, Barbara Kolsun, Professor of Practice and Director of the FAME Center for Fashion, Arts, Media & Entertainment Law at Cardozo School of Law, explains why the answer is often no. She speaks from experience: she served for many years as general counsel to several fashion companies, including Kate Spade.
The Kate Spade Example
The question drew attention when Coach acquired Kate Spade & Company in 2017 in a deal valued at about $2.4 billion. Was Kate Spade, the person, still entitled to use her name? Professor Kolsun's answer is no. In her words, Kate Spade sold her name the first time she sold the company. Once a designer creates an entity that owns her brand, which tends to happen early, she no longer necessarily owns that brand herself.
It Depends on the Name and Likeness Agreement
The details turn on the contract, specifically the name and likeness agreement. Professor Kolsun explains that designers will be asked to sign one when they sell their companies, or even earlier, when they form an LLC or other entity to own the intellectual property in the brand.
Can the designer then open a new shop selling apparel or other fashion products under her name? Probably not, she says, though it depends on the agreement. What about an unrelated business, such as selling swimming pools? Again, it depends on the agreement, but generally no. Once the designer puts her name on the brand and sells it, the name is no longer hers to use commercially.
Starting Over Under a New Name
A designer can usually return to the same industry under a different name. Professor Kolsun points to Kate Spade's later venture, Frances Valentine, a shoe and accessories line launched without the Kate Spade name. She calls it an interesting and very complicated case, but one that illustrates the rule: the designer kept working in fashion, just not under the name she had sold.
What to Know Now
The core lesson remains: what a designer can do with her name after a sale depends on what she signed. Kate Spade co-founded Frances Valentine in 2016 and died in 2018; her original brand continues under Tapestry, the company formerly known as Coach. Courts have shaped the edges of these deals. In JA Apparel Corp. v. Abboud, the Second Circuit held that whether menswear designer Joseph Abboud's sale of his "names" barred all uses of his personal name depended on the contract's meaning, and on remand he was allowed some descriptive use of his name in advertising, though not as a brand. In the United Kingdom, Karen Millen lost a 2016 case over using her name, including "Karen" alone, for new ventures after selling her namesake company. In December 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that a mark consisting of a designer's name may be revoked if its use misleads consumers about the designer's involvement, though a designer's departure alone is not enough. For designers, the practical advice is to negotiate the name and likeness agreement carefully before the first deal.
