Van Heusen Brand Audit: A New York Owner Holds the Name

Van Heusen has been sold in India since 1990, and at the end of March 2026 it ran 283 stores of its own over 5,16,667 sq ft, plus 51 innerwear stores. Most shoppers take it for an Aditya Birla brand the way Louis Philippe is one. The trade mark records read differently.

Snapshot

Company answerable today

Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Limited, CIN U46410MH2024PLC423195

Proprietor of the clothing marks

ABG Izod LLC, 1411 Broadway, New York

Typical price charged

₹1,155 to ₹2,336 against one MRP of ₹2,625, on 6 September 2026

Who holds the Van Heusen name

The business is run by Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Limited, created when the Madura Fashion & Lifestyle business was demerged out of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail. The scheme took effect on 1 May 2025 and the shares listed that June. FY26 group revenue was ₹8,396 crore, of which the Lifestyle Brands segment was ₹7,154 crore; Van Heusen’s own revenue is disclosed nowhere.

The name is a separate question. On an aggregator’s mirror of the Controller General’s trade mark record, read on 6 September 2026, all three old Van Heusen clothing registrations in class 25 stand in the name of ABG Izod LLC of New York. So do the sub-brands an Indian shopper meets — Pantshop, Mirako, Flex, Invisibles, Power Dressing — while the brand’s own store here sells those lines.

ABG Izod’s address on the register, 1411 Broadway, is Authentic Brands Group’s own. Authentic bought the Izod, Van Heusen, Arrow and Geoffrey Beene trade marks from PVH Corp. for $223 million, completed 2 August 2021.

Owned or licensed — what the filings say

PVH Corp.’s American annual reports name an Indian licensee for three years running. Listing its heritage brand licensing partners, the Form 10-K for fiscal 2012, 2013 and 2014 each carries the row “Madura Garments — Van Heusen men’s and women’s dresswear, sportswear and accessories (India and Middle East)”. The last was filed on 1 April 2015. From fiscal 2015 the Indian row names Arvind, and no Van Heusen row appears — but that table is introduced with the word “include”, so it was never complete, and its dropping out establishes nothing about whether the licence ended.

The Indian side does not settle it either. The 2024-25 annual report says the 1999 purchase of Madura Garments gained the group “ownership or exclusive licensing rights for all four brands” — one sentence covering Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England, without saying which fell in which bucket. The listing document says the scheme’s intellectual property “is in the process of getting assigned”, and separately that the international brands it distributes “are not owned by us”. Van Heusen appears in neither list, and no filing read names a licensor, term, territory or royalty for it.

The shop is Indian, the shirt is Indian, and the name over the door stands in a New York proprietor’s register entry.

One pair of records sharpens it. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail applied for “Van Heusen Protech” in three classes on 12 May 2020 and those applications are withdrawn; the same mark in the same classes was filed that July by the New York proprietor and is registered. Louis Philippe’s mark was created abroad and bought outright by the group in 2000; Arrow and U.S. Polo Assn. are licensed, and the filings say so in terms. Van Heusen is a third thing — a foreign-owned mark an Indian company operates, on terms no readable document states. Reebok is a trade mark with tenants too, and sits in the same demerged business.

The English company behind three Indian menswear names

The British Van Heusen Company Limited of Taunton, Somerset, filed both later Indian Van Heusen registrations, in 1983 and 1986, and the 1943 mark came into its name in 1965. In February 1989 it filed the Louis Philippe Elysee mark in India, assigning it to Indian Rayon with effect from 16 February 2000, and it had filed LOUIS PHILIPPE in the United States in 1986 and 1988. In May 1995 it filed the “Friday Dressing” device mark from Viyella House, Somercotes — the address the Indian register gives for William Hollins Company, which filed the first Allen Solly application in 1993.

One English company, dissolved on 5 November 2024, filed marks behind three of the four Aditya Birla menswear names, and sold Louis Philippe and Van Heusen fourteen months apart to different buyers. A loose end nobody has closed: the FY26 annual report calls Van Heusen a brand with “a rich heritage of 129 years in the United States of America”, while every Indian registration in the chain descends from a British company. How the two were related before 2001 is not established.

Van Heusen brand audit: what it costs in India

MRP in Indian apparel is not a price, and this is a clean example. Of 298 listings read on 6 September 2026, 261 of the 297 carrying a price were below MRP, with no sale event announced.

The samples hold different mixes, so the medians are not a ranking: inside Tata CLiQ, shirts ran a median 41% off MRP across 43 listings and trousers 11% across 50. On whole-channel figures the brand’s own store discounts about as hard as Myntra, and Tata CLiQ least of the three.

The sharpest test is one MRP read across all three on one day. Nine garments carrying an MRP of ₹2,625 were charged between ₹1,155, for slim fit formal trousers on Myntra, and ₹2,336 for a half-sleeve formal shirt on the brand’s own store — a spread of just over two times on one printed number. Tata CLiQ’s discounts off MRP cluster on a few rates, 11%, 21%, 30%, 36% and 41% among them, which reads as the platform’s pricing tiers rather than the garment’s. Innerwear is the exception: all 22 Tata CLiQ listings at full MRP were innerwear or basics. None of this is a law of Indian retail — checked the same day, Westside sold at MRP across every listing read. Our guide to Indian clothing brands sets the neighbours side by side.

What the label says

A Legal Metrology declaration names who is legally answerable for the goods, not who sewed the garment. Under the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, notified as G.S.R. 202(E) on 7 March 2011, a pre-packed garment carries the manufacturer or packer and address and an MRP inclusive of all taxes, with country of origin required for imported products — and since 1 January 2018, on the e-commerce listing too.

The variation sits inside each channel, not between them. Aditya Birla Garments Limited is the listed company’s own wholly owned subsidiary, and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail is the entity that ceased to hold the brand on 1 May 2025, so a catalogue lagging a reorganisation is ordinary. Third-party names appear only in the Myntra data — Young Brand Apparel in Tamil Nadu, Shanta Denims in Bangladesh. Which declared addresses are factories rather than offices is not established.

Origin follows the goods. India was declared on all 90 Tata CLiQ listings carrying the field, on 38 of 40 on Myntra and on 69 of 80 on the brand’s own store — the exceptions being two Bangladesh on Myntra and, on the own store, four Sri Lanka briefs, five China listings of bags and accessories, and one pair of UAE jeans. Where a garment is declared made in India, import duty is not in the price at all, and the declaration is how a reader tells the two apart — the same check that catches a British-sounding brand made in India. Tata CLiQ carries the block under “More Product Information”, the brand’s own store behind a control marked “PRODUCT DECLARATION”. Fibre composition is published on all three channels; GSM appeared on none of the 298 listings, so judge shirting weight by hand.

Reputation, courts and lookalikes

Three decided matters are on the Indian record. A Delhi district court decreed a suit by PVH Corp. on 26 November 2019, with a permanent injunction against use of VAN HEUSEN on readymade clothing and punitive damages of ₹1,00,000 plus costs, and decreed a second PVH suit on 23 April 2024, with an injunction and costs including a ₹50,000 commissioner’s fee, the defendants not having appeared. On 7 December 2020 a Bengaluru city civil court decreed in part, with costs, a suit by Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail over a “VAN HEUSEN” board at a Shimla shop, ordering it removed while dismissing the declaratory relief the company had sought. Two enforcement wins for the American proprietor; one partial win for the Indian operator, part of whose claim was refused.

A counterfeit and a legal lookalike are different things, and the register settles the difference. “Van Helene” was applied for in clothing in 2010, was registered and remains on the register; “Ven Heusen” was withdrawn, “San Heusen” refused and “Sam Heusen” abandoned. On advertising, one complaint about a Van Heusen innerwear advertisement is on the Advertising Standards Council of India’s file, brought by a member of the public against Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, and it was not upheld. That decision concerned one advertisement as it then stood; it is not a standing approval of any form of words, nobody has ruled on anything the brand runs today, and the council is a self-regulatory industry body rather than a statutory regulator.

Common questions

References

1. Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands, Information Memorandum, 19 June 2025 — demerger dates, brand-ownership wording
2. Annual Report FY2025-26 — stores, positioning, the 129-years claim
3. Annual Report FY2024-25 — the 1999 Madura Garments sentence
4. Results release, 7 May 2026 — the FY26 revenue and segment figures
5. Trade mark 15017, on an aggregator’s mirror of the register — the 1943 filing and every change of proprietor
6. Trade mark 412671, register mirror — the 1983 Taunton filing; 455647 carries the 1986 one
7. Trade mark 4447288, register mirror — the sub-brands
8. US records of The British Van Heusen Company Limited — the LOUIS PHILIPPE filings
9. UK Companies House, company 00229190 — incorporation, renaming, dissolution
10. PVH Corp., Form 10-K, fiscal 2012 — the Madura Garments row
11. PVH Corp., Form 10-K, fiscal 2014 — the last filing naming an Indian licensee
12. PVH Corp., Form 10-K, fiscal 2015 — the “include” wording and the Arvind row
13. PVH Corp. completes sale of Heritage Brands, 2 August 2021 — $223 million
14. Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, Rule 6 — the declaration requirements
15. PVH Corp. suit, New Delhi, 26 November 2019 — injunction and damages
16. PVH Corp. suit, New Delhi, 23 April 2024 — injunction and costs
17. Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail suit, Bengaluru, 7 December 2020 — decreed in part
18. Tata CLiQ Van Heusen store, 6 September 2026 — 118 listings
19. Myntra Van Heusen, 6 September 2026 — 100 priced listings
20. Van Heusen India, the brand’s own store, 6 September 2026 — 80 listings