In terms of highly likely life events, the notion that Meghan Markle would choose the same name as Mark Kolski’s eight-year-old clothing company was not something he ever considered.
When that did play out on Tuesday, a stranger tipped him off by sending a screenshot that Markle teased on Instagram that her lifestyle company was being renamed As Ever. Kolski sells altered vintage clothing and his own designs under that same name. Markle’s choice led to an onslaught of emails and DMs from all over the world inquiring whether there was an association between the two companies or mistakenly assuming — and criticizing — that decision, Kolski said. Needless to say, it’s been a week like no other for the low-key Brooklynite, who sounded pretty Zen about the situation, albeit a little weary Thursday night.
During a phone interview, he said he had ruled out taking any legal action. He noted someone pointed out the Rhode-NYC versus Hailey Bieber-backed Rhode case as an example. “I just want to know that I can keep my name, and make clothes,” he said. “Another aspect is, will the confusion of an association have an impact on me? That’s the unknown and I really have no control over that.”
As the son of a lawyer and the brother of a practicing one, he knew that setting up his company as As Ever LLC in 2017 came with some protections and common law rights to the name. At that time, asever.com was not being used or available to purchase as a domain, he said. Ditto for social media — hence his @asevernyc on Instagram.
Familiar with what is a common saying in England, he researched the origins of “as ever” before naming his company and traced its early origins to around the time of William Shakespeare. In that research, it was his understanding that getting a trademark for a common saying was difficult. “Trademarks are not the end all be all of doing anything. They provide some protections, but the USPTO [United States Patent and Trademark Office] has no kind of enforcement. If there’s any kind of perceived conflict, they leave it up to the people to file legal action in the courts. But that would require hiring an attorney and proving there was some kind of harm or confusion or different interest,” he said.
Uncertain what’s going to happen to his business, after this viral media moment dies down, Kolski said that it could just proceed as it’s been, or give him more opportunities. He added, “They could say, ‘We don’t want you to do this anymore.’ It’s all speculative.’”
A look from As Ever that was designed by Mark Kolski.
Markle’s As Ever has a few patents pending but apparel is not one of the categories.
“That’s probably calculated. I’m sure they knew I existed when all of this was decided,” Kolski said with a laugh. “The amount of people, who were able to find me, after the slightest hint of this news was out before the official announcement, [shows that] I’m not hidden.”
Site traffic is up and there has been a bump in sales, but Kolski doesn’t exactly know how much yet.
Aside from spending the past few days trying to make sense of the As Ever overlap, he is busy setting up his next production run in an Elizabeth, N.J., factory. His main concern is whether he has anything to worry about in relation to his company’s name and making clothes. “Whatever they want to do, they’re going to because this is a big venture. There are a lot of people, a lot of money and time being put into it. They have the ability to do what they want. I’m not interested in getting into any legal fight, because there’s no way that I can do that financially,” Kolski said.
Mark Kolski
Photo by Astrid Dahl/Courtesy
“I’ve had no contact with them. I’m taking steps to protect my business to allow me to make clothing under my name. If anything arises that becomes a roadblock for me to do that, I’ll just have to evaluate that on merit and see what steps I should take. I haven’t hired an attorney to stop anything. There’s nothing right now to stop,” Kolski said. ”They’re fully capable of proceeding with the name that they’ve chosen. What happens to me in the wake of that? I don’t know. Right now there’s good attention on my business.”
But there has also been a downside. He said there was also “a lot of ugliness directed through my emails — not at me, but they thought I was associated with this new venture. They were just saying hateful things, not nice things.”
“A vintage hound” in his late teens and early 20s, Kolski said he started playing around with altering vintage in 2015 as a side job. In the pre-internet era, he also had worked at Billy Martin’s on Madison Avenue, which allowed him to source vintage Western clothes. He later sold vintage finds he unearthed in Brooklyn at the 26th Street flea market in Manhattan. During a stint in advertising that required a good amount of travel, he kept the vintage gig going by buying and selling in the cities he visited. Kolski later went on to design bars and restaurants too in New York City.
As Ever’s tank pant was one of the company’s first styles.
Photo Courtesy As Ever
His As Ever label sprang from creating a tanker pant and then a pink jumpsuit for his wife Astrid Dahl in 2015. After taking indigo dying classes at Sara Moffat’s LDBA Studio, he started making clothes with the sewing machine his wife had given him for Christmas and selling them via Moffat. In 2017, As Ever became official and started manufacturing. A Williamsburg store then picked up some of the designs to sell. And after Joyce Lee, who was then the creative director of Madewell, admired her neighbor Moffat’s jumpsuit and asked who made it, that led to a collaboration between As Ever and Madewell in 2018.
Another serendipitous encounter happened when Dahl was wearing the pink jumpsuit one day in Williamsburg, and Elle’s then fashion editor Samira Nasr stopped her. She too contacted Kolski to buy one and then later asked for styles for an editorial shoot. And after Lee wore her jumpsuit to a J.Crew corporate meeting, the now ex-creative director Jenna Lyons was soon another Kolski fan. That constellation of events led to As Ever “actually becoming a business,” he said.
Now that it is, he’s focused on doing whatever he can to protect his business and execute his next production run at Robert Chauca’s family-owned factory in New Jersey. By Friday afternoon, Markle had amassed 669,000 Instagram followers via @aseverofficial, since Tuesday’s rebranded announcement, whereas Kolski has 21,800 followers on @asevernyc.
Having already “learned about the big guy being able to do what they want, and how much power the big people have and how much power the little people have” through working in advertising in Hollywood, Kolski said, “little guys don’t have much power. If you’re someone, who is not well-known and doesn’t have a lot of financial backing, but you have a good idea — you don’t have a lot of leverage with that idea,” he said. “I just want to focus on what I want to do, which is to make my clothes. I don’t have any control over anything else. And nobody said, ‘You can’t do this.’”
