Jeremy Scott, creative director at the fashion house Moschino, is so hot right now that Kanye West name dropped him at the VMAs.
On Tuesday night, Scott reveled at the Hollywood premiere of a documentary on his rise to fashion fame: “Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer.”
“Last night felt like a dream!” he wrote on Instagram, posting a picture of him and Katy Perry mugging in front of fans.
But at the TCL Chinese Theatre for the debut his eponymous biopic, Scott was also slapped with a dose of reality: a lawsuit calling him and his label copycats.
A process server posing as an autograph seeker personally handed the suit to Scott, according to a proof of service document provided to CNN by an attorney for the plaintiff in the case.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court in August by New York street artist Rime, claims Scott infringed on the copyright of the artist when he used an apparent reproduction of one of his works on a Moschino dress.
“Jeremy Scott was given the past month to agree to voluntarily accept service, which did not happen,” said Jeff Gluck, an attorney for Rime, who is identified in the suit as Joseph Tierney. “We were left with no other choice but to hire a process server to locate him and serve him with the lawsuit.”
Pablo Olea, a representative for Scott, disputed the attorney’s claim that Scott was served at the premiere and said his client plans on refuting the charges in court.
“Jeremy Scott was not served on the red carpet. Just as many of the allegations in this lawsuit are false, this claim is also false,” Olea said.
“He looks forward to mounting a vigorous defense against these baseless allegations in court, where lawsuits are tried on their actual merits,” he said.
A signed legal document provided by Tierney’s attorney shows an employee of the Michelson Attorney Service served copies of the summons and complaint to Scott at the address of the theater.
Scott will have 21 days after being served to respond to the suit, Tierney’s attorney said.
The dress at the heart of the suit was seen around the world when Katy Perry wore it on the red carpet of the Met Gala in May.
It landed the singer on worst dressed lists, but the appearance at the gala — which the suit says included an arrival in a spray-painted Rolls Royce and Moschino branded cans of fake spray paint — was a commercial coup for the Milan-based fashion company. It spurred a New York Times profile of the creative director and, according to financial statements, a 16% jump in revenue for the first half of the year.
For Tierney, the episode damaged his reputation and left him “wide open to charges of ‘selling out.’ “
“Nothing is more antithetical to the outsider ‘street cred’ that is essential to graffiti artists than association with European chic, luxury and glamour — of which Moschino is the epitome,” the suit says.
