If the public didn’t know that Diddy parted ways with his clothing brand Sean John in 2016, a new lawsuit has let them know now.
AllHipHop reports that the legendary Hip Hip figure filed suit against the brand as well as their new owner GBG USA on Thursday (February 5), following a new partnership Sean John created with fashion brand Missguided.
The $25 million suit alleges Sean John illegally used Diddy’s image, likeness and persona without permission while advertising their new women’s line with Misguided and even used quotes from him that he never even said.
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“[Diddy] does not challenge [Sean John/GBG’s] right to use the Sean John trademark, but rather [Sean John/GBG’s] decision to leverage a fabricated quote they created and then falsely attributed to Mr. Combs, and to use Mr. Combs’s name and other monikers to create the false and misleading impression that Mr. Combs is the decision-maker behind the designs and creation of the GBG Collection,” his lawyer Jonathan D. Davis said in the suit.
Sean John was founded in 1998 and as recently as 2016 (the year he reportedly sold it), the brand was making $400 million in annual sales and was in 400 of the 600 Macy’s stores in the U.S.
“We wanted to give them fashion that represents them,” Diddy said of the brand in an April 2016 interview with The Washington Post. “We wanted to give them extremely multicultural and diverse fashion. We brought them fashion-tainment… When I think about the whole journey, it truly was a fashion revolution from how things were then and to see the impact we had on style. Hip Hop fashion is now dominant.”