Your Name Is the Asset

A designer’s name does something no other asset in fashion does. It sits on the label, it carries the goodwill, and it is also, legally, a trademark that can be sold, licensed, and controlled by whoever holds it on paper. The history of this industry includes designers who could no longer design under their own names, and none of them planned it. It happened through ordinary paperwork, signed in good faith, in years when everything was going well.

The mechanics are always mundane. A license broad enough to be sublicensed to anyone. A company named after you in which a partner holds the majority. A power of attorney that outlives the trust it was built on. An acquisition where the trademarks went with the business because nobody carved them out. Each document was reasonable on its own day. Together they can add up to someone else deciding what your name appears on.

So know the ground you stand on. In which countries is your name registered as a mark, and who is the registered owner: you, or a company, and if a company, who controls it. What do the licenses that touch the name actually permit, for how long, and what happens to them if the company changes hands. These are questions with findable answers, and the time to find them is before anyone is asking.

When investment comes, the structure is negotiable, whatever the first draft says. Backing that takes a minority stake and leaves the founder in control of the name has been done at the highest level of this industry. The version where the money takes the majority and the name goes with it is only a convention, and a designer who knows that walks into the room differently.

Above all, keep one adviser whose only interest is yours reading anything that touches the name before it is signed, someone who answers to nobody at the table but you. Houses change, partners change, and careers move on. Your name should be the one thing that walks with you, and whether it does is decided entirely by the paper.