The marriage of the PVH Corp.’s brand power and G-III Apparel Group’s production prowess has been crumbling since 2022, when PVH moved to take back its Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein licenses over five years. 

Now the breakup has become not just litigious, but bitter. 

G-III hit PVH with a $250 million breach of contract lawsuit last month after it was denied three-year extensions on its women’s suit licenses for both brands. But because the full complaint was under seal, the legal paperwork only hinted at the scope of the dispute. 

Now that a redacted version of the lawsuit has been filed with New York State Court, years of frustration were given an opportunity to boil over in public. 

G-III not only argues that there was no basis to deny the license extensions, but takes aim at PVH chief executive officer Stefan Larsson’s plans to remake the company, highlights the attendant impact on the licensed businesses and alleges a “sustained and deliberate campaign of unlawful misconduct.” 

“We filed this legal action to protect and uphold our contractual rights, as we believe that PVH is taking steps that do not align with our agreements,” a G-III spokesperson said. “We have had a successful partnership for more than two decades and see their recent actions as an unreasonable attempt to jeopardize our business.”

Regarding the lawsuit, a PVH spokesperson said: “G-III’s claims are baseless. We are responding via the legal process and look forward to addressing these matters in court. Through our continued execution of the PVH+ Plan, we are building our brands for the long term. Our strong, go-forward licensing partnerships play an important role in helping us drive sustainable, brand-accretive growth and unlock the power of our iconic brands.”

PVH generated $300 million in earnings before interest and taxes from its overall licensing business last year — and the G-III license takeback impacts 20 percent of PVH’s expected licensing revenues for 2025.

While the suit hints at the state of the broader relationship between PVH and G-III, it directly focuses in on a narrower slice of the business. It also offers just one side of the story.

But it’s juicy in a fashion insider kind of way.

Generally, the suit bemoans the loss of the partnership  that was established with former PVH CEO Manny Chirico and cumulatively  produced $16 billion in North American wholesale sales. 

“After Mr. Chirico retired following a long and successful run as PVH’s CEO, a new management team took the reins at PVH in 2021. Relations between defendants and G-III have worsened ever since, as defendants have made a series of strategic and entirely avoidable blunders,” the suit claimed. “In April 2022, PVH launched a new strategy for the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, called the PVH+ Plan. When introducing the plan to investors, PVH stated that ‘our licensed partners play a vital role in allowing us to bring the full lifestyle of Calvin Klein to our consumers…we are working closely with our licensing partners to bring them along on our journey.’”

Turns out, the journey wasn’t as long for G-III as it expected and PVH said later that year that it would be repatriating its G-III licenses over five years. 

Behind the scenes, even the communication strategy to reveal the change caused friction. 

According to the suit, the PVH news release on the license amendments was different than the drafts that were shared with G-III and touted the company’s plan to “transition…core product categories back to PVH.” The release, along with an interview Larsson gave to WWD and subsequent trade articles, “shocked the market — in particular department stores and other retailers that had counted on G-III as a long-term partner in regard to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger products,” the suit alleged.

Despite the obvious tension at the start, both companies appeared to be going their own way.

Morris Goldfarb, who’s been CEO of G-III for more than 50 years, put all of his long experience in to fill the hole that would be left when PVH ultimately walked away with about half of his business. G-III relaunched its Donna Karan brand, looked to rev up the Karl Lagerfeld subsidiary, signed a 25-year license for Halston, inked a deal with Champion and more.

Meanwhile, Larsson, who before PVH worked at H&M, Old Navy and Ralph Lauren Corp., sharpened his strategic focus on Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. His PVH+ Plan looked to pump up the brands with high profile media moments, like Calvin Klein’s campaign with Bad Bunny featuring the brand’s new Icon Cotton Stretch underwear with an “infinity waistband” that has no stitching. 

The idea is to get people talking by putting a white-hot spotlight on those hero products and then presenting a very focused brand, an effort that was meant to be helped along by taking direct control over the U.S. wholesale business G-III previously managed. When PVH has lined everything up with its new approach — like with Bad Bunny — the results are good. But at least some analysts are getting antsy and are keen to see those kinds of PVH+ gains hit more of the company’s overall business.

G-III’s suit zeros in on a relatively nuanced bit of contractual back and forth. 

When the company put in its bid to renew the suit licenses, PVH replied that both businesses had seen a “negative compound annual growth rate (i.e., a decline)” that would have been even worse if PVH had not allowed G-III to sell more goods through off-price than initially allowed under the contract. 

But the suit argues that: “to the extent that sales of these apparel lines have been declining, the declines are a direct — and frankly foreseeable and preventable — consequence of defendants’ own ill-considered and poorly executed strategies and actions — issues that, by the way, G-III has consistently sought to bring to PVH’s attention, but to no avail — as well as macro trends in the apparel industry, none of which are, needless to say, under G-III’s control.”

G-III also claimed that both the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger suit businesses hit their “bargained-for performance.” 

“Defendants are unreasonably seeking to impose a new and extracontractual condition on G-III’s right to extend the licenses, over and above the contractually agreed-upon performance requirements,” the suit said. “The real reason for defendants’ unreasonable refusal to approve an extension of the licenses is that, under the stewardship of its new management team, PVH has been on a punitive and meritless campaign against G-III, attempting at every turn to harm G-III’s business and reputation and to blame G-III for the failures of defendants’ own ill-advised strategies. This latest maneuver is just more of the same.”

The suit also contended that, “in another major and head-scratching blow to G-III and its department store clients, PVH promoted a new strategy for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger that sought to focus sales of the brands in a more limited number of stores, including by reducing door counts by more than 90 percent — from 450 to only 25 ‘doors’ — at one retailer, closing all ‘doors’ at another retailer, and asking G-III to reduce the number of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger skus. Further, PVH did not and does not have a successful track record on women’s wholesale, so the retail market was nervous about how PVH would be able to execute in the women’s wholesale space.”

PVH has been looking to build back its North American wholesale business methodically so that it meshes with its broader, global vision for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.