Why do we still try to make our parents proud? A drag queen vs Patagonia.
Issue 90 — Monday, June 15, 2026
Against dark evergreens, Pattie Gonia’s face sits inside a mane of enormous centre-parted copper hair, like a lion in its ruff or a character from the Wizard of Oz. Heavy black false lashes, high blush worn over a real, kept auburn moustache. She never shaves it; the beard-and-drag combination is part of her brand.
Pattie is a musician, an environmental activist, and known to a following of over three million as the world’s first backpacking drag queen.
Today she’s wearing a thick-grey carabiner as a drop earring, filming something a little different. Not the usual climate explainer. The runtime is 6:50, a multi-part titled “Patagonia vs Pattie Gonia”.
Patagonia is suing Pattie for trademark infringement.
Right now there’s more of the case on TikTok than in the court documents. Swipe up and the previous video is Ryan Gellert, CEO of Patagonia, on a conference stage.
Patagonia tried to talk and Pattie wouldn’t come to the table, he says.
“We are not trying to silence somebody. We are not trying to take somebody’s identity away,“ he says.
Today’s shoot is Pattie filing her objection:
“Either you, Ryan Gellert, are lying to the public, or the people under you are lying to your face.“
Sustained.
Well, sort of. This being the algorithm, it’s a trial with a million juries and judges. The feed holds all four verdicts, good and bad, for both sides.
Pattie-the-climate-activist, bullied by a billion-dollar environmental brand. Pattie-the-grifter, milking the PR of a Pride-month martyrdom. Patagonia-the-sellout, the most tone-deaf corporation of 2026. Patagonia-the-grown-up, defending its trademark because the law’s written that way.
The last one is the closest this story has to an objective fact.
Pattie and Patagonia had lived together in the world for eight years without a care; when Pattie’s audience grew they even drew up some guidelines to avoid brand confusion.
The trouble starts on 21st September 2025, Pattie filed to trademark “Pattie Gonia,” which would include letting her sell outdoor clothing under the name.
She’d recently seen what losing a name does. Her friend Clair Barnes had performed as Lexi Love for sixteen years, and the year she finally broke out on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a stranger revived an old registration and took it.
Overnight, Clair’s music and bookings were gone.
So Pattie wasn’t filing against Patagonia to be predatory per se, rather “to make sure that never happened to me.“
The sad part is that Pattie and Patagonia believe in a great many of the same things, but there is no defence in the Lanham Act for being kindred spirits. The lawyers paid to look after the serious dollars know the rule: A brand is money waiting to flow to you, so protect it or lose it to someone who will.
The funny part is that for a fight supposedly about money, neither of these two seems particularly well suited.
For Pattie, the money mostly passes through. “A Fundraiser That’s Not a Drag” ran its sixth annual edition in 2024, nearly $409,000 raised in one year alone. “The $1M Dollar Backpacking Trip” was a 100-mile hike, in drag, for queer and BIPOC outdoor equity. She runs an outdoor jobs board for LGBTQ people. Around $3.7 million raised to date.
For Patagonia, the company is also set up to give most away. A trust the family controls holds the 2% that votes; the other 98% sends its dividends to a fund that grants to environmental causes. Last year $40 million went out — a soft year for a trust whose annual target is $100 million.
In other words, for both of them, the money ends up in the same place anyway: Mother Nature.
The lawyering that’s got in the way here, the whole business of it, is something Patagonia’s own founder knew all too well.
Penning the first page of his book over twenty years ago, Yvon Chouinard wrote:
“I’ve been a businessman for almost fifty years. It’s as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer.“
Patagonia is suing for a single dollar in damages, which tells you it never wanted Pattie’s money. The proposed million in legal fees is less than a fight like this actually costs, but enough to lean on Pattie and push for a fast settlement.
And a coexistence agreement, the standard fix that lets two near-identical names share the world, would close the whole thing tomorrow.
Every door leads to the answer. So why has neither side walked through it?
Probably because there are no bad verdicts here.
Ever since Bud Light put a trans influencer on a can and lost the top spot it had held for twenty years, the mood has changed. Go woke, go broke is the going wisdom now.
Suing a drag queen lets Patagonia strike a macho-company pose, while actually handing its own CEO and Pattie a stage for a conversation far bigger than any Pride activation could buy.
Literally, billions and billions of views talking about the importance of identity, many of which are queers praising Gellert’s calm composure. Meanwhile, Pattie’s “Part 1” video is going to be her biggest ever: 5.4 million views and 1.2m likes already.
The sharpest criticism, that a real lawsuit has been turned into algorithmic cosplay, cuts Pattie a little deeper than Patagonia, but they’re both running the same marketing playbook: If you want attention don’t run a campaign, feign a fight.
There’s a reason the marketing chief and the crisis-comms chief roles are merging.
And the trademarks?
Right now, for $36 from a bootleg site with addresses in Azusa and Shenzhen, you can buy a hoodie that steals from both of them at once. Patagonia’s famous skyline of peaks, but striped in Pride rainbow, a backpacker kicking out one heeled leg at the summit, and underneath, set in Patagonia’s own fat serif, the words “pattie gonia”.
No connection to her store, or theirs.
The one operation actually infringing both names at once is the only party nobody is suing.
Pattie Gonia is Wyn Wiley. A photographer from Lincoln, Nebraska. An Eagle Scout who grew up being told the outdoors was no place for a boy like him.
His father was from Alaska.
The relationship was complicated and then he was gone.
Wyn took what remained of him north to the foot of Holgate Glacier, in the Kenai Fjords. You can’t drive there, you’re going to have to cross rock, kayak across cold green water, where you’ll find the headstone is a wall of ten-thousand-year-old ice.
That was a while ago.
Since then, the glacier has calved into the sea. Every year, more and more is lost, at an ever-increasing rate. And with it Wyn’s father’s resting place.
In 2023, Wyn went back with Yo-Yo Ma and the Alaskan singer Quinn Christopherson to film something of a funeral song, a requiem.
Realising they were giving up before they’d even started, they had a change of heart, and wrote this opening line instead:
“Well, I’m not going to say goodbye.“
This week SpaceX went public, the largest IPO there has ever been, minting fortunes at a scale no one ever imagined. Amid all the talk, I caught myself thinking how small and stupid Pattie Gonia and Patagonia’s way of doing business looks next to it.
Take some thread, sew a few vests, borrow a name, walk up some hills in six-inch heels, then hand most of what little it makes back to the ice and the rock and the cold green water?
Then I thought about Wyn’s father.
He never got to meet Pattie.
Maybe a hard man, who knows. Maybe no time for business people, or lawyers, or even men in drag. Looking up now at the lot of us, all the noise about leaving the planet, all the grabbing.
And I figure a soul settled into the nature he came from, worked on by the long fact of his passing, might be startled by something closer to home.
A son who also gave him a daughter.
One with a feel for the wild and the will not to let it go.
Who became famous of all things, and pours most of what she makes down into the ice that holds him.
He’d sure be proud.
Here’s to the rainbow. ♡
Market Moves
SpaceX shares gain for second day after blockbuster debut | Financial Times
UK government plans aggressive state stakes in British companies | The Times
Why the US economy keeps beating the odds | BBC News
Brand Beat
Patagonia and Pattie Gonia clash over trademark rights | AP News
How crisis communications are claiming their seat at the C-suite table | The Wall Street Journal
Starbucks apologises after South Korea tank day promotion causes backlash | The Guardian
Nike is struggling to recapture its winning formula | The Economist
Nike vs Adidas: who really won the World Cup ad battle? | Campaign Live
Six brands celebrated the New York Knicks’ historic NBA championship win | Adweek
Charlotte Tilbury receives CBE for services to the beauty industry | Business of Fashion
Mammoth Brands wants to be the next big consumer goods giant | CNBC
Family farmers now earn more from social media than selling crops | The Wall Street Journal
Momfluencers are selling AI as a better co-parent than men | Wired
CAA and TPG launch $250 million fund to back YouTube creators | Bloomberg
Meta poaches Snapchat’s creator connector to boost wearables push | The Hollywood Reporter
Fox acquires Roku in a $22 billion streaming deal | The Verge
Airbnb is rethinking its purpose under Brian Chesky’s vision | The New York Times
Eli Lilly shares climb after late-stage weight loss drug trial succeeds | The Wall Street Journal
Starting Up
How smaller brands can grow by acting bigger than they are | Marketing Week
The investors and insiders set to cash in on the AI IPO rush | TechCrunch
Meet the 24-year-old AI prodigy backed by Jane Street | The Wall Street Journal
Stars + Honey raises $24 million Series A to grow protein bar brand | WWD
Phoebe Gates secures high-profile investor for her shopping business | The List
Tech Tidbits
Google signs $920 million monthly computing deal with SpaceX | Bloomberg
AI labelled the greatest money-wasting scheme humanity has ever seen | The Telegraph
One journalist’s year living and working alongside AI robots | The Guardian
Meta employees are pushing back hard on Zuckerberg’s hackathon plan | Wired
UK under-16s social media ban: which apps are affected and how it works | The Guardian
US suspends access to Anthropic’s latest models | Anthropic
Venture Vibes
SpaceX IPO: A guide to the biggest winners | The Wall Street Journal
Founders go public with VC horror stories — and name names | TechCrunch
Why continuation funds are becoming the go-to move in venture capital | Sifted
Bending Spoons cofounders become billionaires as Italian startup hits $11B valuation | Forbes
Sadiq Khan makes the case for London competing with Silicon Valley | City A.M.
Design Driven
What the design industry consistently gets wrong about good taste | Creative Review
KFC’s rebrand transforms its iconic bucket into an entire brand world | It’s Nice That
Hermès opens a London Maison rooted in British eccentricity and craft | Wallpaper
Can AI actually produce writing that people want to read? | The New Yorker
Happiness
SpaceX employees are learning how the wealthy manage their money | The Wall Street Journal
Silicon Valley’s AI boom drives escort rates as high as $6K per hour | New York Post
AI coworkers may be flattening the workplace as we know it | The State of Brand
I hiked the Appalachians to connect with nature — here’s how | National Geographic
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