In yet another lawsuit between Yves Saint Laurent and former artistic director Hedi Slimane, the French fashion house has once again emerged as the loser: YSL is sentenced to pay nearly 700,000 euros to Slimane for the use of Slimane’s photos.
8 million euro pictures
The Paris Court of Appeal ruled that luxury brand Yves Saint Laurent had used photographs from a campaign by Hedi Slimane for longer than was allowed. After his departure, Yves Saint Laurent was still in possession of the rights to the photographs for a period of two years, for which the designer had already received some eight million euros, but their subsequent use still had to be negotiated, the verdict stated.
By the end of 2017, Slimane, then working for rival LVMH, had already filed a lawsuit. He demanded a compensation of no less than six million dollars. Although the court had ruled against him at first instance, the fashion designer now won his appeal.
20 million euros later
The fact that Slimane has already received substantial payment for his services does not exempt YSL from paying him compensation for copyright infringement, the judges reasoned, according to Bloomberg. However, the judge considered that Slimane was asking too much: he will receive 618,000 euros in total, and an additional 80,000 euros to cover legal costs.
This is already the third trial between the two parties since Slimane left Kering’s Yves Saint Laurent in 2016. Kering and the creator first disagreed over the non-competition clause of 10 million euros and an amount of 9.3 million euros, to which Slimane still claimed to be entitled for his last year of service. The French courts twice ordered the company to pay.
