Mark Kolski was sitting at his home in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, drinking a cup of coffee by his sewing machine, when the messages started to pour in.
On Tuesday, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had released the name for her new cooking and lifestyle brand, As Ever. But Mr. Kolski’s morning was thrown into tumult because the vintage-inspired workwear brand he started a decade ago is also named, as it happens, As Ever.
“I started getting messages from friends and family and people that know my brand,” Mr. Kolski, 58, said. “And they were saying, ‘Have you seen this?’ There was just a lot of confusion, and I didn’t really know what to do.”
Mr. Kolski’s life has been upended in the days since, his phone ringing incessantly, as he’s found himself thrown into a flurry of speculative tabloid coverage about Meghan’s use of his label’s name. In an interview this week, he said he had been reading up on trademark law and had consulted with a lawyer. His brand also has been discovered by new fans, his Instagram account netting thousands of followers.
For Meghan, the incident is the latest snarl in her efforts to create a lifestyle brand. Last year she announced that she was starting one called American Riviera Orchard, but her trademark application faced setbacks, including questions over the use of a geographic place name and the potential trademark’s similarity to Harry & David’s Royal Riviera products.
In a video announcement on her Instagram account on Tuesday, Meghan addressed the name change, adding that As Ever would debut soon around the same time as her coming Netflix series, “With Love, Meghan.”
“In two weeks my show is coming out, which I’m so excited for, and also my business, which I think there’s been a lot of curiosity about,” she said. “Last year, I had thought: ‘You know what? American Riviera, that sounds like such a great name. It’s my neighborhood, it’s a nickname for Santa Barbara.’ But it limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area.”
“I’ve been waiting for a moment to share a name,” she said, adding, “and it’s called As Ever. As Ever essentially means as it’s always been.” She continued: “You know I’ve always loved cooking and crafting and gardening. This is what I do. And I haven’t been able to share it with you in the same way for the past few years, but now I can.”
Representatives for Meghan did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the venture’s new name, or whether she was aware of Mr. Kolski’s brand.
As Mr. Kolski reflected on his odyssey this week, he recalled the humble beginnings of his label.
After moving to Manhattan in his early 20s, he worked at Billy Martin’s, a country and western boutique on the Upper East Side, and he developed a passion for collecting vintage. He went on to adopt a design style based on repurposing old military clothing into garments like tanker pants and work jackets. His work was discovered, he said, when the fashion editor Samira Nasr saw his wife, Astrid Dahl, his longtime creative collaborator, walking down a street in a pink jumpsuit he had made for her. That jumpsuit would become his label’s first hit, and in 2017 a photograph of Jenna Lyons wearing it appeared in a Vogue article that touted it as “millennial pink.”
Though he has explored his options, Mr. Kolski says he is not planning any legal recourse. “My brother’s an attorney, and so I called him,” he said. “He’s not an intellectual property lawyer, but he did say, you know, you have some rights based on your established business.”
“I’m not trying to mount some legal offensive here,” he added. “Right now, I’m just going back to work, and I’m trying to keep the awareness on my brand. If any conflict eventually arises that affects my business, I’ll evaluate that then.”
Mr. Kolski also stressed that, despite reports in the tabloids to the contrary, he harbors no resentment toward the Duchess of Sussex.
“What it feels like is out there people are making comments, and the media they want to create a rift between us, but there isn’t,” he said. “I haven’t talked to them. They haven’t talked to me. There’s no battle going on.”
Jeanne Fromer, a law professor at New York University who specializes in intellectual property, said that although Mr. Kolski does not have a registered trademark, he probably has trademark protection simply because he has been doing business under the name.
“They have a claim that, with the right set of facts, they might be able to make,” she said. “It might be an uphill battle to make it, but it’s not a laughable claim.”
As of Friday afternoon, however, matters of trademark law were not on Mr. Kolski’s mind. He was busy dealing with the surge of interest in his fashion line. The inventory on his website’s sale section had sold out. And new fans kept following him on Instagram.
“It has brought a new set of eyes to my business,” Mr. Kolski said. “That’s the positive for me. More people are aware of me now. So will it hurt my business in the future? I don’t think so?”
Natasha Rodriguez contributed reporting.
