Klum, 36, had launched a collection of designs for Mouawad five years ago, which soon became a huge success, selling out within moments of going on sale on TV shopping channels like QVC.
But she revealed that a lack of business experience, along with the lawsuit from the jewellery firm over a particular design, put an end to her dreams of becoming a jewellery designer.
“I don’t do the jewellery anymore, which I loved doing.
Unfortunately, I did have a partner who... maybe wasn’t as knowledgeable in terms of setting up a business. I worked five years very hard on that,” said Heidi to Los Angeles Times.“But we stopped because we had a lawsuit with Van Cleef & Arpels - they wanted to have the clover, even though our designs had never matched, I don’t know how may designs I had done in five years, maybe 800 different designs - but they just wanted to own the clover motif”.
“So they went after everyone who does that and they said, ‘We own the clover’. I think when you’re a small company, which we are, we’re not a Van Cleef - they have a thousand lawyers. I’m a small fry next to that. That’s a sad lesson to learn”.
“That’s how life is. You have to set yourself up from the very beginning properly,” she added.
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