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Kendall Jenner Turns to Quinn Emanuel in Fight With Italian Fashion Brand

71st Cannes Film Festival Kendall Jenner 2018 - FILE/REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
71st Cannes Film Festival Kendall Jenner 2018 - FILE/REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
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Kendall Jenner Turns to Quinn Emanuel in Fight With Italian Fashion Brand

71st Cannes Film Festival Kendall Jenner 2018 - FILE/REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
71st Cannes Film Festival Kendall Jenner 2018 - FILE/REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

US model Kendall Jenner and her management agency have tapped a pair of practice leaders at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to fend off an $1.8 million lawsuit alleging Jenner breached a contract with an Italian fashion label.

Defending Jenner in the Manhattan federal court fight are Alex Spiro, co-chair of Quinn Emanuel's investigations, government enforcement & white collar defense practice, and Maaren Shah, co-chair of the firm’s art litigation and disputes practice.

Spiro and Shah on Friday moved to dismiss the suit by Italian brand Liu Jo against Jenner, model management company The Society Management, and Elite World Group LLC, The Society's parent company. The Quinn Emanuel lawyers are also representing The Society and Elite World Group, Reuters reported.

The case stems from a fashion shoot that was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Liu Jo hired Jenner for two photoshoots for its 25th anniversary, its complaint said. The first was completed, but the second one, originally set for March 2020 in London, was derailed by travel restrictions.

The fashion brand, which says it has already paid $1.35 million to Jenner, alleged that it obtained no response from Jenner after trying to re-schedule the second one multiple times.

After Liu Jo filed suit in August, a spokesperson for The Society told Reuters that Jenner had "continually offered Liu Jo alternative dates and locations to fulfill an agreement that was forced to be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic."

"This meritless lawsuit is about an Italian clothing brand’s attempts to avoid its contractual obligations after unilaterally terminating a bargained-for agreement in direct contravention of the explicit terms of that agreement," Spiro and Shah argued in their motion to dismiss on Friday.

Shah cites Elite World Group as a top client on her Quinn Emanuel webpage. Her clients have also included the Andy Warhol Foundation. Spiro, meanwhile, is representing rapper Jay-Z in a lawsuit claiming that the photographer who took the photo of Jay-Z for his debut album "Reasonable Doubt" has been misusing his image to sell merchandise.

Spiro also successfully represented Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk in a defamation lawsuit filed by a British cave explorer who Musk had branded a "pedo guy" on Twitter.

Liu Jo is represented by a team of attorneys from Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox. They did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is Liu Jo S.p.A. v. Kendall Jenner, et al.,

For Liu Jo: Byron Pickard, Matt Zuziak and Nicholas Nowak, of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox

For defendants: Alex Spiro and Maaren Shah, of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

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Fashion

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
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As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.
At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz, The Associated Press reported. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.
The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.
“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something ... for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.
Ghana is one of Africa's leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the UK, according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.
Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.
The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade, cited a much lower estimate, saying only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.
In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.
But neither Ghana's fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.
“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.
Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.
The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of “Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.”
In countries like the UK, unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are "seen as low-value items,” he said.
Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the UK rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.
The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of US pressure, citing concerns the West's refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”
Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.
In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.
Ghana's beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country's waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Allison Bartella said.
“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.