It's the fashion eye-roll seen 'round the world: in April, Christian Louboutin, one of fashion's most iconic shoemakers, filed a lawsuit against fashion house Yves Saint Laurent for manufacturing shoes with Louboutin-style red soles. Louboutin trademarked his red varnished heels back in 2008 and is seeking $1 million in damages (which we calculated to be the equivalent of 250 pairs of Louboutin shoes).
The most recent courtroom update involves an arguably snarky rebuttal from YSL, essentially pooh-poohing Louboutin's claims. According to The Daily Mail, Louboutin claims to be "the first designer to develop the idea of having red soles on women's shoes," in spite of the fact that YSL has used scarlet soles on select shoe styles since the '70s -- long before Louboutin's innovation in 1992.
Court papers filed by YSL state that "Louboutin was fradulent in his trademark application claim that he had 'exclusive' use of the red sole:
"Red outsoles are a commonly used ornamental design feature in footwear, dating as far back as the red shoes worn by King Louis XIV in the 1600s and the ruby red shoes that carried Dorothy home in The Wizard of Oz."
We can see it now...skywriting reading, "Surrender Louboutin."
Louboutin also went head-to-head, or heel-to-heel, with Brazilian shoemaker Carmen Steffens for producing shoes with his "signature" soles. In both lawsuits, Louboutin claims that the other designers' red-soled shoes are being mistaken for those by Louboutin, creating a false identity for his company.