When the jewelry company Alex and Ani sought to redefine its product line in 2023, executives turned to L.A.-based designer Pamela Love.
Along with her own eponymous brand, Love had worked with J. Crew, Shinola and Top Shop. At Alex and Ani, she would be “creative director” for about $21,000 per month, plus royalties.
Now, Love has taken Alex and Ani’s owners to court, saying the company is selling her designs but owes her up to $6 million in royalties and other costs, along with more than $200,000 in unpaid consulting fees.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York, Love and her attorneys are seeking to collect the unpaid money while also alleging that the jewelry brand’s owners — including a company held by L.A. celebrity attorney Mark Geragos — engaged in a “shell game” and orchestrated “a collusive foreclosure” to dodge paying Love and other creditors.
The suit names the jewelry company’s two owners, the Bathing Club LLC, which it alleges is controlled by Geragos, and LC A&A Holdings, which it alleges is controlled by financier Lyndon Lea through the private equity fund Lion Capital.
“After Pamela Love commenced the arbitration against Alex and Ani to recover unpaid consulting fees and sales royalties … Alex and Ani’s ultimate beneficial owners, Lyndon Lea and Mark Geragos, executed a years-old conspiracy to render Alex and Ani judgment proof,” Love’s suit said.
Neither Geragos nor Lea immediately responded to the allegations or to requests for comment.
The lawsuit comes as Geragos has rocketed to wider celebrity from representing Lyle and Erik Menendez, and it spotlights the lawyer’s broader business ventures, which include ownership of Los Angeles Magazine, restaurants, hotels in California and New York, and the minority stake in Alex and Ani. The jewelry company has struggled in recent years, including a 2021 bankruptcy.
After starting at Alex and Ani in 2023, Love initially received payment but got none for her final 10 months. She designed jewelry for Alex and Ani that went on sale last summer, according to the suit. Under the three-year deal, Love was eligible for up to $2 million per year in royalties on products she designed or “otherwise contributed creatively,” but she never received such payments or sales reports that would allow her to determine royalties, according to the suit.
In the spring of 2024, she initiated arbitration to collect the unpaid funds.
“Alex and Ani did not deny that it owes Pamela Love substantial fees under the agreement,” the suit said. A former lawyer for the company “admitted” during the arbitration that Alex and Ani was “trying to find a way to pay Pamela her money.”
The arbitrator, former L.A. Superior Court judge Katherine Chilton, sided with Love and said it was “undisputed” that she had not been paid for 10 months. In a December decision, Chilton required Alex and Ani LLC to post as security $208,333.40 for the consulting work, along with $12,000 in costs.
Chilton noted that the company’s “sole justification” for not paying Love was its poor financial condition and “apparently, because the assets have been transferred to a third party.”
Love’s suit also alleges a years-long effort to move assets to make them difficult for creditors like Love to collect.
Among those steps: in February 2023, the Geragos-linked firm the Bathing Club recorded a security interest in all Alex and Ani assets, according to the suit. In 2024, shortly after Love initiated her arbitration, Lea, who owns 65% of the jewelry company, also assigned a lien on all of the company’s assets to the Bathing Club.
“The transfer was from insider to insider,” the lawsuit said. “With two insider liens on Alex and Ani’s assets and no defenses to Pamela Love’s claims … Geragos caused the Bathing Club and Alex and Ani to execute a strict foreclosure on Alex and Ani’s assets on or around July 24, 2024.”
The suit alleges that the foreclosure “was part of a sham to defraud creditors” and did not disrupt business operations.
“The purported foreclosure was in name only,” the suit said. “Employees of Alex and Ani were ‘laid off’ and ‘rehired’ on the same day.”
Love’s suit casts the foreclosure as part of an “‘insolvency defense” that Geragos attempted while also serving as Alex and Ani’s lawyer in the arbitration. In a September email, Geragos indicated that a board member “will be winding up the entity” and that the company’s CEO, Prita Kumar, had “not worked for Alex and Ani since July when the lender foreclosed.”
During the arbitration, the independent board member Larry Meyer declared under penalty of perjury that he was “managing the orderly shutdown of the company.”
According to the suit, however, Alex and Ani’s online business has continued, and in the fall, Love’s manager was able to purchase a ring that Love designed from the Alex and Ani website.
“Pamela Love did not receive a royalty payment for this sale,” the suit noted.
And earlier this year, Kumar, whom Geragos had indicated was no longer with the company, posted on LinkedIn that Alex and Ani was “on a tear” and looking to hire. One of the positions, she wrote, was for a “leader … who can drive revenue for our several million owned customers.”
Love’s suit alleges that the maneuverings were planned well in advance. As evidence, Love recounted a conversation with Alex and Ani’s chief creative officer, who told Love that she was “part of a ‘go-forward’ plan.”
“‘You would be switched to a different company, and we would all be paid by [Geragos’] company,’” the chief creative officer told Love, according to the suit.
