The legal issues here seem fairly straightforward, at least to our not-an-actual-legal-expert eyes: The company claims it’s had an understanding with Pattie Gonia (a.k.a. performer Wyn Wiley, who’s been using the on-stage persona to promote environmental causes since 2018) that dates back to 2022, in which Patagonia promised to not make an issue of the name as long as she didn’t sell anything with the “Pattie Gonia” moniker on it, or do promotion in a way that mimicked the company’s distinctive logo. (Pattie Gonia and her team dispute that that was the arrived-at agreement in their own communications quoted in the suit; we’ll get to those more in a second.) The lawsuit then follows those assertions with lots of images of both the Pattie Gonia merch store—launched in 2024, and in which she sells repurposed clothes stamped with Pattie Gonia branding in a non-Patagonia-looking font—and various promotional photos of Pattie Gonia sporting clothes and accessories featuring a logo that is clearly riffing on Patagonia’s mountain range branding.
What’s striking about the complaint (readable here), though, is how obviously the company knows that it’s going to lose any kind of PR war that breaks out on the front of “large clothing company sues drag queen who spends her days promoting environmental causes.” It notes, frequently, that it respects and admires Pattie Gonia’s work; asserts that it has to protect its trademark even from people it likes; includes fully 16 set-up paragraphs detailing its various charitable acts; and ends by noting that it’s only asking for a nominal $1 in damages (alongside the request that California courts shut down Pattie Gonia’s commercial use of the name.) Even so: Probably screwed, at least when it comes to the “Just be cool, okay?” test.
It’s worth noting that, while Pattie Gonia/Wiley hasn’t responded directly to the lawsuit yet, Patagonia’s complaints do include emails from both her and her business manager, and they are both quite a bit meaner, and quite a bit funnier, than the company’s own efforts. These include asserting that a) she’s named after the South American region, and “It’s wonderful that both Patagonia the brand and Pattie Gonia the drag queen are inspired by Patagonia’s beauty,” b), that she was actually about to write them to distance herself from their brand, because of controversy over military contracts Patagonia has taken in the past to provide clothes for the U.S. military, and—most hilariously—c), a statement that, while all of the shirts sold in the Pattie Gonia store are taken from discarded clothes headed for the garbage heap, “per the brand Patagonia’s consideration…we won’t save any of the brand Patagonia’s product we frequently find heading to landfills.” Which is about as literal a version of reading someone for filth as we’ve ever encountered.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.