Have you unintentionally bought into Ivanka Trump’s clothing line? Potentially, after it emerged that G-III, the company who owns the rights to the eponymous brand, has been replacing labels with new tags bearing the name ‘Adrienne Vittadini Studio’ – a pre-existing American clothing company. According to Business of Fashion, who uncovered the apparent switch, the newly labelled clothes were shipped to Florida outlet chain Stein Mart where they were then being sold to unsuspecting customers. 

The discovery comes after alleged weak sales (following retailers like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus dropping the brand), and a boycott initiated by Grab Your Wallet against Trump-owned or affiliated companies. The campaign distributed letters that could be sent to apply pressure to retailers to discontinue stocking items. Apparently, one Stein Mart customer took protesting into their own hands – spitting on an Ivanka-labelled blouse in disgust.

Despite a seemingly universal shunning, in a statement to BoF, a representative for G-III maintains “the Ivanka Trump brand continues to grow and remains very strong.” Whether it was a mistake or an intentional profit-driven deception is still unknown, but the organisation claims that neither Ivanka nor anybody else at the company was aware of the change. (WYS Adrienne Vittadini?)

With sales figures for the first quarter of 2017 to be published shortly, we can only hazard a guess as to why G-III may have wanted to play down associations with Trump.