Tue Jun 15, 2010 @ 10:40AM PST
By Eriq Gardner
We're sure the studio behind the "Twilight" movies doesn't want to break the hearts of young girls everywhere. But Summit has decided to stop a retailer from selling a jacket advertised as being worn by Bella Swan.
The studio filed a lawsuit against women's fashion designer B.B. Dakota on Friday for copyright and trademark infringement. On the company's website, B.B. Dakota advertises
a blue cotton canvas jacket like this: "Bella Swann (sic) wears this jacket in Twilight and scores the hottest vampire in high school, and so can you!"
Wow, what young Twi-hard could resist that product pitch?
When the jacket first debuted in 2008, Women's Wear Daily
wrote it was "the stuff that legends are made of." MTV's website
remarked it "brings you
this much closer to Robert Pattinson." Stylist.com
called it "love at first bite, er, sight" with a price tag that didn't suck. And SoJones.com
sang its praises as "very vampirelicious."
For more proof, Entertainment Weekly ran a short vignette on how the jacket got into the first film. Apparently, Kristen Stewart was supposed to wear a brown hoodie, but the color blue was thought to better match Stewart's brown hair. So costume designer Wendy Chuck made a dash to Nordstrom and picked something off the rack. "Wendy saved the day!" remarked director Catherine Hardwicke.
Wendy also opened the door to one of the best ambush marketing campaigns in years.
In the lawsuit, Summit seeks an injunction against further sale of the item, all profits earned from the jacket, and—the horror!—it wants B.B. Dakota to "deliver to Summit for destruction all Bella Jackets."
Where is Edward Cullen to save the day?