Patagonia vs Pattie Gonia: A PR Lesson in Humanity
By: Coral Darby
Maybe we’ve met. Maybe not. Either way, if you’ve spent any time in the outdoor, hunt, fish, or endurance space over the last two decades, there’s a reasonable chance our paths have crossed.
Those who know me know that I bleed Patagonia. I spent a semester in college living and working at their Ventura headquarters, learning the business from a marketing lens. The brand’s commitment to environmental activism, its willingness to take uncomfortable stands, its insistence that business can be a force for good — I’ve carried those lessons for 30 years. Which is exactly why watching the dispute between the company and Pattie Gonia unfold is so uncomfortable.
The Lawsuit
Here’s the situation in plain terms. Patagonia filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against Wyn Wiley, the drag queen and climate activist known as Pattie Gonia, alleging that the play on their name and similar branding has caused confusion and deception among consumers. This move has prompted immediate outrage across social channels and platforms of outdoor and community activists. One of the most value-driven brands in the outdoor industry suddenly looks like a corporation using its legal resources to silence an activist.
The facts, however, tell a more complicated story.
Patagonia claims the two parties reached an agreement years ago, and for a while it worked — until late 2024, when Pattie Gonia started selling branded apparel online, continued creating versions of Patagonia’s logo, and refused outreach from the brand asking them to honor the original agreement. The breaking point came in September 2025, when Pattie Gonia’s corporate entity filed an official trademark application seeking exclusive commercial rights across clothing, marketing services, and environmental advocacy. That’s a materially different story than the one dominating the conversation. And Patagonia has largely let the other version win.
The PR Misstep
I’ve long been a fan of Scott Galloway, a NYU Stern professor, author, and one of the sharpest business minds. His three steps of crisis management are deceptively simple: acknowledge the problem, take personal responsibility, and overcorrect. Patagonia has acknowledged the legal problem. What they haven’t acknowledged is the trust problem, and in my view, those are not the same thing.
Their public statement reads: “We cannot selectively choose to enforce our rights based on whether we agree with a particular point of view,” which is legally sound. It’s also exactly the kind of language that lands like a corporate memo when your audience expected something that sounded more like Yvon Chouinard. Meanwhile, Pattie Gonia has framed the lawsuit as an attempt to permanently take away their name, with the threat of more than $1 million in legal fees. Whether that’s entirely fair is almost beside the point. It’s the story that’s sticking.
Patagonia didn’t lose the narrative because it withheld information. They lost it because they sent lawyer-speak to do a leader’s job.
The facts are available, but what’s missing is a human voice. As a Patagonia superfan, I want to see them step forward to say: “We understand why this looks bad; here’s the full picture, and here’s where we stand.” Not a legal statement; a human interaction. The overcorrection this moment calls for isn’t more documentation; it’s Yvon Chouinard or Ryan Gellert speaking directly and humbly to the community that helped build this brand.
Pattie Gonia has said publicly, “I have believed from the beginning that there is room for an agreement that protects your trademark while letting me keep my name and my work.” That’s an open door. A brand with Patagonia’s values and communications history should be walking through it out loud, on the record, and in their own voice.
The brands that survive a crisis with their reputation intact aren’t the ones that never find themselves in complicated situations. They’re the ones who know the difference between a legal strategy and a communications strategy and understand that winning in court while losing your audience isn’t winning at all. Patagonia has spent 50 years earning the trust of this community. That’s worth protecting with the same urgency they’re bringing to the trademark.
The right approach is human conversation. It just takes a leader, not a lawyer, to make it happen.