Influencer-owned brands are legally scaffolded by industry professionals

Evidence

It’s difficult to know how much we should trust Star’s account of what he owns. While he is, certainly, CEO and co-owner of his cosmetics company, early Articles of Organization for Jeffree Star Cosmetics LLC, filed in California, list Star as co-owner, along with two other individuals with whom he shared ownership at the time: Ashely Avildsen, founder of emo and alternative rock label Sumerian Records and, today, film director; and Jeffrey R. Cohen, an intellectual property lawyer, formerly publisher of the music business trade publication MusicBIZ, with the law firm Millen, White, Zelano & Branigan, PC, an international firm that specializes in patent, trademark, copyright, and entertainment law. The narrative that Killer Merch, as Star says in “Secret World,” came from “a few friends” of his, transforming into a business in which “we ship a lot of people, a lot of people you would recognize,” generally rings true, though it obscures how these “friends” include an entertainment industry lawyer. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 303

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The legal scaffolding behind the influencer-as-firm — the corporation is never just the persona; named co-owners and lawyers make the form real.