Items from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line were re-labeled as a different brand before being sold to a discount chain store.
G-III apparel group, which licenses Ivanka Trump clothing, rebranded the clothing as part of the brand Adrienne Vittadini before selling the clothes to Stein Mart, a discount department store chain, without knowledge or consent from the Ivanka Trump clothing line. G-III has taken responsibility for the mislabeling, and has begun working to remove those clothes, the apparel group said.
“G-III has already begun to take corrective actions, including facilitating the immediate removal of any mistakenly labeled merchandise from its customer,” a representative for G-III said in a statement. “The Ivanka Trump brand continues to grow and remains very strong.”
G-III declined to provide any figures on the number of items of clothing that were mislabeled, or the number of stores provided with the mislabeled clothing.
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Stein Mart CEO D. Hunt Hawkins told Business of Fashion, which first reported the incorrect labeling, that carrying the brand as a different label was not political, although he told the publication there had been some customer complaints about carrying Ivanka Trump’s brand. “We’ve had both labels for a while,” he said. “We may see more Adrienne Vittadini in the short term. 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.”
Ivanka Trump’s brand declined to comment. Ivanka Trump herself stepped down from the business when she moved to Washington, D.C., after her father President Donald Trump was elected. However, she has continued to be dogged by questions of entanglement with the business. Last week, the Associated Press reported that China greenlit three of the trademarks for her company she same day the dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping.