Red Shoes… The Angels Want To Wear My (Monochrome) Red Shoes… (and now they can)
I can hardly think of Christain Louboutin’s (“Louboutin”) “red soled shoe” case without hearing Elvis Costello’s Red Shoes in my head.
…Oh I used to be disgusted
and now I try to be amused.
But since their wings have got rusted,
you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.
Red shoes, the angels wanna wear my red shoes…
For awhile, at least in the Second Circuit, we were wondering who could sell red shoes and/or whether angels might have to go barefoot for awhile… But now we seem to have some clarity on the issue.
To review, Louboutin has been fighting since 2011 to stop Yves St. Laurent (“YSL”) from copying his trademark red-soled shoes. In what had been a somewhat surprising opinion, the Southern District of New York had denied Louboutin’s request for an injunction against YSL’s monochrome red shoes (that included a red sole) last August, on the grounds that color was per se functional as applied to fashion items. We’ve been waiting for months for Louboutin’s appeal to reach a decision, which finally came down on September 5, 2012 from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
My earlier ruminations on … Keep reading