The Court of Turin ordered Parijan SAS to stop selling its suede loafers on 12 May, and the order reached the public on 7 July. It is Loro Piana’s fourth White Sole win since October 2024. Each has named a seller. None has touched the shoe.

Parijan lost on conduct, not construction. It named the shoes Monaco Old Money and seeded them with creators tied to Loro Piana, Gstaad Guy among them; delay now costs the French e-tailer €1,000 a day, and each pair sold in breach costs €500. Judge Ludovico Sburlati held that a product’s complete look can identify its maker much as a trademark does. He is right. He is also describing what Parijan said, not what Parijan made.

The campaign is three and a half years old. Loro Piana announced in December 2022 that it would pursue White Sole plagiarists, on the theory that a pale sole and a deconstructed shape had themselves become a mark. Three and a half years is long enough to test a theory.

Bari supplied the template in November 2024. The court stopped MNSWR Group from selling Viola Milano’s Capri and City loafers, at €400 a pair, €6,700 in costs, and paid notices in Corriere della Sera and Il Sole 24 Ore. Read the remedy again: the prize was the right to publish a correction to the record.

Turin repeated the exercise in April 2025 against Eleante Fashion, which ran Instagram videos comparing its City Loafer to the original and dressed its marketing in photographs of Loro Piana shopping bags. The tariff matched Parijan’s exactly: €1,000 a day, €500 a pair. The court is not pricing the copy. It is pricing the reference.

Every defendant Loro Piana has beaten pointed at Loro Piana first.

The exception confirms the rule. On 30 May 2025 the same Turin court rejected Loro Piana’s claims against Smart Luxury, owner of the Dutch label Aurélien, in their entirety, finding a distinct overall impression and holding that the shapes at issue lacked the novelty that exclusive rights require. The court called the market for the shape crowded, not stolen. Loro Piana has appealed.

The menswear press had already ruled the other way. A shopping guide at Dapper Dangerous ranks Aurélien’s yacht loafer first among Summer Walk alternatives, at $400. That is not the shoe Turin cleared — the ruling concerned Smart Luxury’s Active Knit sneaker and a wider line of shoes and garments. Turin found one distinct product. Shoppers had already substituted another.

The registry got there before either court. In April 2024 the EUIPO refused Loro Piana’s position mark for the band, knot and pendants on its shoe uppers, calling the sign one more variant of the many existing on the market. The refusal describes the market, not the brand. By 2024 the design was already common property.

TikTok keeps a standing discovery page for Summer Walk alternatives. Turin took eight weeks to publish an order against one name on it. What Loro Piana holds is a deed to a house anyone may rebuild, provided they never name the architect. The archive is secure. Nobody is visiting.