Lego Legal Battle Ensues Over Lego Antoni’s Lego Leather Jacket

The most painful thing a person can experience is stepping on a Lego. The second most painful thing is having Lego rip off a custom leather jacket you designed for Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski. The latter is what’s happening to designer James Concannon, whose design is being used in the “Queer Eye - The Fab 5 Loft” set without his consent, according to a CNN report.

Concannon filed a complaint last month seeking damages from the Danish company for creating a “blatant copy” of a jacket he created for Porowski in 2018. In his complaint, Concannon showed side-by-side images of the two jackets. Concannon’s jacket has a skull, peace sign, and other unique insignia on the front, and reads “THYME IS ON MY SIDE” on the back. This, of course, is what he calls his “signature propaganda-infused aesthetic.” The Lego version of the jacket does look very similar to Concannon’s, except that it reads “REBUILD THE WORLD” on the back instead. Which maxim is dumber will be up to the jury.

The lawsuit claims that Lego did not reach out to Concannon to clear "the unique placement, coordination, and arrangement of the individual artistic elements" and they did not compensate him for its likeness. Instead, they allegedly offered the designer "a free Fab 5 Loft set — which retails for $99.99 — for his six-year-old son to play with.” This offer was later revoked because “Lego does not give away its products for free."

But where is Antoni in all of this? Is he standing beside the man whose clothes he has worn on his hit television show many times before? Or is he siding with the mega-corporation that was finally able to make his dreams come true (being a little plastic man)? The answer is neither, presumably at the behest of his own legal counsel. Instead, he was most recently spotted on Instagram, where he posted a selfie captioned “dog hair don’t care” because there is a little bit of dog hair on his hoodie.