Kanye West files new trademarks to expand Donda Sports brand

Kanye West has filed a number of new trademarks to expand his Donda Sports clothing brand.

According to a new report from TMZ, the rapper’s company Mascotte Holdings has filed trademarks for clothing items including jackets, hats, shirts, shoes and a host of accessories including blankets, wallets and umbrellas.

Another trademark reportedly filed is for ‘Dove Sports’, a new label that will be used for “athletic services such as training sessions, competitions, tournaments, camps, seminars, field trips and even traditional educational frameworks.”

The news comes after Ye this week made known his plans to go solo in his future fashion ventures. In a new Bloomberg interview, the rapper detailed his plans to have a clean break with his biggest corporate collaborators. These include opening his own Donda campuses nationwide, which will house shopping, schools, farms, and dorms in an integrated facility. Merchandise sold at the campuses will be designed by existing Yeezy staff, and unique to Yeezy’s physical and online shops.

“It’s fine. I made the companies money. The companies made me money. We created ideas that will change apparel forever,” the rapper shared in the interview. “Like the round jacket, the foam runner, the slides that have changed the shoe industry. Now it’s time for Ye to make the new industry. No more companies standing in between me and the audience.”

After the interview was released, Ye followed through and ended his partnership with the fashion company Gap. West’s lawyers sent a letter to the brand notifying them that the rapper would formally sever ties with it, terminating the 10-year agreement they first established in 2020. The letter, sent on West’s behalf, claimed that Gap had failed to meet the terms of its contract.

Nicholas Gravante, who serves as one of West’s attorneys, elaborated on this claim in a statement to Pitchfork. “Gap left Ye no choice but to terminate their collaboration,” Gravante wrote, “because of Gap’s substantial noncompliance.” According to West’s team, Gap failed to deliver on its obligation to sell 40 per cent of the rapper’s Yeezy Gap items in brick-and-mortar stores, and failed to open retail stores dedicated to his products by mid-2023.

The termination of the contract bookends what has been a tumultuous partnership between West and Gap. Soon after the announcement of their collaboration in 2020, West took to Twitter to lament his exclusion from the company’s board. “I don’t have a board seat at Gap,” the rapper wrote at the time, “Black board seats matter.”

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