Citing declining sales, Ivanka Trump’s clothing line was pulled off the racks at Nordstrom in February. A fracas ensued, as President Donald Trump tweeted about his poor daughter and Kellyanne Conway went on TV to give Ivanka’s line a free commercial. Now Ivanka’s clothes are ending up at discount stores under a new name—Adrienne Vittadini.
Adrienne Vittadini is an actual clothing designer whose clothes retail at many of the same places Ivanka’s have. Business of Fashion reports about the strange label switcheroo, which occured at Florida-based chain Stein Mart. Merchandise from G-III, a company that manufactures and markets Ivanka’s clothes under a licensing agreement, was relabeled as Vittadini’s without the permission of the Trump brand:
“G-III accepts responsibility for resolving this issue, which occurred without the knowledge or consent of the Ivanka Trump organisation,” a representative for G-III said in a statement to BoF. “G-III has already begun to take corrective actions, including facilitating the immediate removal of any mistakenly labelled merchandise from its customer. The Ivanka Trump brand continues to grow and remains very strong.”
Neither Vittadini, who is represented by an entirely different licensing group than Ivanka Trump, nor G-III would explain how the label switch happened. Switching labels after a clothing line heads to the discount stores is actually not an uncommon practice, but if done without permission the perpetrators could be liable for fraud. Stein Mart chief executive D. Hunt Hawkins told BoF that whatever the reason for the switch was, it had nothing to do with Ivanka’s lack of popularity.
“We’ve had both labels for a while. We may see more Adrienne Vittadini in the short term,” he explained, “I’ve had an equal number of [customers] say that they don’t want and do want [the Ivanka Trump merchandise] in the store. If we get it, we get.”
And it may very well be that Ivanka Trump’s clothes are doing fine everywhere but Nordstrom. G-III reported an increase of $17.9 million in sales on her merchandise from 2015 to 2016, though the numbers aren’t out for the time covering her father’s presidency. These sales also aren’t necessarily coming from the US, according to BoF. The article says Ivanka’s line is thought to be doing very well in China, where she is extremely popular.