Legal Issues in What Celebrities Wear At Award Shows

From the designer's perspective, dressing a celebrity for an awards show represents a significant investment in time, energy and creative output. Designer Vera Wang described the process as a “gamble of the highest order.” The stakes are high not only because designers must be careful not to deliver a gown that will be “ridiculed or ignored” or that “just technically doesn't work,” Wang said, but also because if a celebrity changes her mind at the last minute, it can be “devastating” to the designers and the sewers, staff, public relations people and others who have devoted months of work to completing and promoting the design. For example, actress Anne Hathaway famously agreed to wear a Valentino gown to the 2013 Oscars, as announced in a press release. At the last minute, though, Hathaway opted to wear a pink Prada gown while accepting her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2013, Vanity Fair catalogued a history of similar snubs.

To reduce these risks, some brands have opted to sign exclusive endorsement contracts with their celebrity spokespersons. For example, as part of making actress Charlize Theron the face of Raymond Weil watches, Theron signed an agreement establishing that she would not publicly wear any other company's watches during the term of their contract. When Theron was photographed wearing a Christian Dior watch at the South by Southwest Film Festival, Weil sued for breach of contract and even obtained partial summary judgment. The complaint sought $20 million in damages, but the parties settled for an undisclosed amount. Raymond Weil S.A. v. Theron, 1:2007cv01786 (S.D.N.Y.).