Gentle Monster vs. Blue Elephant: Korean eyewear brand's global rise and its copycat fight back home

Unprecedented criminal case over unregistered eyewear designs tests the limits of imitation as both Korean brands pursue overseas expansion

Gentle Monster’s global standing is hardly in doubt.

Its recent campaigns feature Tilda Swinton, Japanese actor Kentaro Sakaguchi and Stray Kids’ Felix. It has released collaborations with Prada and Maison Margiela, to name a few, and crossed into wearables with Google and Samsung Electronics.

With its success came a Korean eyewear boom and a wave of challengers. Rising fastest is Blue Elephant, with similarly trendy frames for much lower prices and gallery-like stores to match.

Those parallels have since become the subject of a lawsuit. IICOMBINED, which runs Gentle Monster alongside Tamburins and Nudake, accuses Blue Elephant of copying its frames, its stores and even its glasses cases. The fight has already cost Blue Elephant’s founder his job.

A case without precedent

The fight began with IICOMBINED’s criminal complaint in December 2024, followed by a civil suit for an injunction and damages in October 2025.

Two months later, IICOMBINED took its evidence public. Scans it commissioned from an outside firm matched Gentle Monster’s 2021 JEFF frame to a 2023 Blue Elephant model at 99.9441 percent. It also flagged a similar glasses pouch. Rock sculptures in Blue Elephant’s Myeong-dong store, it argued, mirrored its Shanghai shop.

It has become the first case in Korea to bring criminal charges over copying a product design that was never registered.

The case soon escalated, resulting in Blue Elephant founder Choi Jin-woo’s resignation as CEO in February and his indictment by Daejeon prosecutors a month later.

Prosecutors allege Blue Elephant sent photos of Gentle Monster frames, stamped with its own logo, to overseas factories. It then sold some 321,000 units of 51 imitation models from 2023 to mid-2025, worth 12.3 billion won ($9 million). In 29 models, 3D scans matched at least 95 percent of contour lines, and 18 topped 99 percent. None carried a registered design.

IICOMBINED refuses to tolerate a business model that profits from what it calls copies.

"Protecting intellectual property is not a dispute between two companies but a matter tied to the growth of the entire industry," a Gentle Monster official stated. "Copying a brand wholesale, from its glasses and cases to its store spaces, is a crime that damages the industry’s ecosystem."

Blue Elephant contends that investigators overlooked the nature of the eyewear industry.

"Using trends and references is very common in fashion, and Blue Elephant is no different," co-CEO Ko Kyung-min argued at a media briefing in May, conceding the company had consulted specific references. "By nature, eyewear has lenses, nose pads and temples, so distinctive designs are hard to come by."

In July, the Daejeon District Court released Choi on bail. His criminal trial remains at first instance, with more witness hearings to come. The next sessions are set for December and January.

A market without borders

Both brands now compete in a fast-growing, crowded market. Korea’s eyewear market hit about 4.7 trillion won in 2025, up 74 percent from 2022, according to IMARC Group.

Seongsu has become the front line of K-eyewear. Gentle Monster’s headquarters and Blue Elephant’s flagship there draw more foreign shoppers than locals, and labels with a similar aesthetic, including Double Lovers and Mutt, have opened flagships in the area.

Gentle Monster's ambitions are as big as the brand's hype: About 50 of its 86 stores now operate outside Korea, and it plans to reach about 200 within three to five years. Overseas revenue rose to 332.9 billion won last year from 303.7 billion won, accounting for more than 40 percent of sales. Total revenue slipped 2.1 percent to 772.3 billion won, breaking years of uninterrupted growth.

Some blame the domestic slip on Blue Elephant. Its frames sell for 50,000 to 70,000 won, a fraction of Gentle Monster’s 200,000 to 300,000 won. Others doubt the link, however. "They both sell eyewear, but Gentle Monster occupies a far more premium tier, and their customers barely overlap," one industry official noted.

Blue Elephant’s revenue jumped 69 percent to 50.7 billion won last year, though operating profit sank 74 percent to 3.3 billion won. Only three of its 36 stores are outside Korea — two in Japan and one recently opened in the US.

Still, its rapid growth has caught investors’ attention. In August, Singapore-based private equity firm Affirma Capital valued the company at about 400 billion won and agreed to invest 100 billion won for a 25.8 percent stake.

"With a foreign private equity fund on board, Blue Elephant will likely accelerate its overseas expansion," one investment industry source predicted. Others found the deal striking given the founder’s legal jeopardy. To them, it betrays how little intellectual property still carries little weight in Korea.

Finding new growth engines matters as much as extending global reach with new flagships, and for eyewear brands, artificial intelligence smart glasses now mark the next chapter.

On that frontier, Gentle Monster stands alone: It debuted an intelligent eyewear concept with Samsung and Google at Google I/O in May, then a new design at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked in London in July. Last year, Google paid about 145 billion won for a 4 percent stake in IICOMBINED, a deal that pegged the company’s worth at roughly 3.7 trillion won.