We are back tracking to check the best of the celebrity blunders. Here’s one from a few years back.
Designer Raymond Weil paid Theron for the rights to her wrists for two years, so she could wear only his watches. The model and actress did not play by the rules and went to a press conference wearing a Dior watch. As you can imagine, Weil wasn’t too happy about this and went on to seek £12m in compensation.
Charlize Theron wears the wrong watch – the cost is only £12m | TheMarketingblog https://t.co/DjeCfUTE9Q pic.twitter.com/8yoLLj3CP0
— Will Corry (@slievemore) February 11, 2016
When Hollywood star Charlize Theron was photographed wearing a Christian Dior watch she did more than just offend the designer’s arch rival Raymond Weil. She landed herself with a huge compensation bill for having broken the terms of a lucrative endorsement deal.
The Oscar-winning actress has been told she will have to pay “substantial” damages to Raymond Weil after breaking the terms of the deal by wearing a Dior timepiece during an 11-month period when she was being paid to be the “face” of the Swiss luxury goods manufacturer.
Raymond Weil is now seeking $20m (£12m) in compensation.
In a 32-page judgment, US District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that Theron was guilty of repeatedly ignoring the terms of her contract with Raymond Weil, most notably at a news conference in Texas.
As well as proving to be rather costly for Theron, the judgement revealed how she was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to wear different brands of jewellery on red carpets and in photo-shoots, and received $3m to endorse Dior perfume in a series of advertisements.
Raymond Weil sued the actress after she was photographed wearing the Dior watch during a press conference at the Texas Film Festival. Although she only wore the offending timepiece for an hour, American newspapers ran pictures captioned “Charlize Theron wears Dior”.
Judge McMahon ruled: “By wearing a Christian Dior watch at the film festival, Theron breached her covenant not to ‘wear publicly any watches other than Raymond Weil’. Theron recognises as much, calling her decision to wear the watch ‘regrettable’. It was more than ‘regrettable’; it was a clear breach of the agreement.”
Theron “was not an unwary agent”,
Theron’s lawyers claimed she was guilty of a simple mistake rather than a deliberate fraud and that she had not understood the terms of her original contract. However, Judge McMahon ruled that Theron “was not an unwary agent”, noting that her initials appeared 10 times on the 10-page contract she broke.
Both sides in the dispute were ordered to attend a pre-trial settlement conference on 7 November. Should they fail to reach an agreement on the level of damages, the case will go before a jury.
The dispute marks the end of what was a beautiful friendship. When Theron signed her original deal with Raymond Weil the company’s chief executive, Olivier Bernheim, declared she was a “stunning and radiant woman who transcends any standard definition, and has evolved into a feminine myth, an icon”.
Like the best watches she represented “beauty, style and perfection of function”, he said, adding that meeting her offered “an unforgettable encounter, a moment of pure magic where time seems to vanish in the air”.