The flower is easy to miss if you only came for the jasmine. Molly Tea, the Shenzhen chain built on that scent, prints four petals and an empty middle on the cup so you can find your bag in a food court. On 29 June the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court decided those petals sat too close to seven drawings Louis Vuitton already owned. The company was told to pay 10 million yuan, and another 300,000 for the cost of bringing the case. One franchise shop in Wuzhong was named with it, and can be held for as much as 100,000 of the bill.
Zhang Bocheng, who founded Molly Tea, said they would appeal. By late July a second hearing had still not been set, and nothing final has been reported since. On Weibo the fight was already going.
The black flower on the cup
Louis Vuitton had asked for 50 million yuan. It received 10 million, a fifth, plus the legal costs the court could match to a receipt. The seven drawings are the four-petal flower inside the monogram, from the canvas Georges Vuitton made in 1896. The mark that ended up on the cup was later, and black. Early Molly Tea shops had used a jasmine bud.
From March 2024, companies tied to Molly Tea applied to register floral marks for shops, advertising, and packaged food. The drawings were refused. What they did register was the Chinese name, for restaurants. The black flower went out on the cups anyway, and on the bags, the shopfronts, and the extras a busy tea brand picks up: earrings, candles, phone cases, red packets. I'll be blunt. After the trademark office has said no, a few thousand shops' worth of cups is a decision.
Nobody in that line was going to believe Louis Vuitton had boiled the tea. The judgment, in the text that circulated in July, worries about a softer mistake. A shopper might think the two brands had done a collaboration, the way tea shops in China announce a new drink. Louis Vuitton had made that thought easier. The Hall, its restaurant in Chengdu, opened in November 2022, and a house café opened in Shanghai in July 2025. Once the flower is on a cake counter, a paper cup is a short walk. Hong Kong is next in the same habit. Le Café Louis Vuitton at K11 MUSEA is due in December.
The house had also wanted a notice in China Consumer News. The court left the statement on Molly Tea's own site and on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin. On the night of 2 July, with the appeal still ahead, the flower on the mini-program changed color.
A diamond with a flower in it
Georges drew the monogram because copiers had caught the checkerboard. That canvas, the Damier, is from 1888. Louis, his father, died in 1892, and the initials on the new cloth were a tribute along with a defense. Georges looked through 1895. In 1896 the canvas put LV among flowers that sit between a plant and a diagram. Gaston-Louis Vuitton, his son, later described one of them as a diamond with bowed sides and a four-petal flower in the center. The house today mentions Art Nouveau, the French taste for Japanese ornament, and Gothic tracery. The hope was more ordinary. A copied trunk ought to look copied.
China had the registration before it had the shop. A four-petal mark was approved in January 1986. The first mainland store, at the Peninsula in Beijing, opened in September 1992. For six years the flower was protected in the capital, with no Louis Vuitton counter where you could buy the bag.
The other history arrived on Weibo over a weekend. The topic of the 10.3 million yuan judgment drew something like 350 million views, by the Global Times's count, and sat at the top of the list. People pointed to baoxiang, the Tang dynasty's ornamental flower, and further back to the four-lobed persimmon calyx on old bronzes. Beijing Daily asked why a Chinese company should pay a French house for a floral design with Chinese roots. I understand the annoyance. A shape you know from a lattice window is a hard thing to hand to a Paris workshop in the 1890s.
The judgment calls four-leaf patterns common, lucky clovers included, and then it gets picky. What the law holds is the drawing: the bend of the line, the way the petals cross. Use a near copy as the face of a shop and you are using a trademark. The damages feel like a scolding. Put the two drawings side by side and the resemblance is plain enough.
A number she would not give
This is the monogram's 130th year, which is an odd moment to be precious about one of its flowers. On 12 October LVMH said Louis Vuitton had been celebrating, with a new cloth called Monogram Emblème, and described a harder China in the same note. Fashion and leather goods, the division Louis Vuitton sits in, fell 5 percent from a year earlier once you set currency aside. Cécile Cabanis, the group's chief financial officer, told Vogue that Louis Vuitton itself was a little below the division. Asia outside Japan, which has carried a lot of the house, slipped by the same 5 percent for the group. At home the drop among Chinese clients was double digits. Fold in the shopping they still do abroad and Cabanis put the whole Chinese client in the mid-teens.
"It is very difficult to quantify the precise impact, but it is probably fair to say that it had a negative impact, at least at the beginning of the quarter." Cécile Cabanis, on the Molly Tea case, 12 October 2026
In July, on the previous call, she would not discuss the lawsuit. It was still in court. Luca Solca, who follows luxury at Bernstein, was less cautious. He told Fortune the backlash might be two or three points of that 5 percent. I would leave that arithmetic in his note. Jelena Sokolova at Morningstar put the weight on Chinese demand, and allowed that the case may have added to it. Cabanis was clearer about the plan. LVMH keeps spending in China, and the shops stay open.
Ten million yuan is a real bill for a tea chain and a smudge in a Louis Vuitton quarter. People who drink the tea, and in a better season buy the bag, came away thinking the house had been greedy about a petal. The longer account of where that money has been going is China's Luxury Consumer Is Trading the Handbag for the Beauty Counter. On 2 July the flower on the phone changed color. The appeal, when it is heard, can argue the curves, and whether 10 million was a fair bill. The drink is the jasmine it was in May.
