Influencer Wars: Inside the $50M Revolve Lawsuit Over Undisclosed Ads šāļø
Revolve has spent years turning Instagram and TikTok into one long runway. Influencers tag @revolve, post glossy āget ready with meā clips, and the brand quietly prints money.
In April 2025, that model turned into a lawsuit.
A consumer, Ligia Negreanu, filed a proposed $50 million class action in the Central District of California, claiming Revolve and a slate of influencers misled shoppers by hiding that those glowing posts were paid endorsements. (Bloomberg Law)
By September, a federal judge sent most of the case into private arbitration, thanks to Revolveās Terms of Use. (The Fashion Law)
Itās a perfect āinfluencer warsā case study: consumer deception, FTC rules, contract drafting, and a reminder that your website terms can be as important as your ad copy.
What Negreanu Says Revolve Did Wrong š§Ø
Negreanuās complaint paints Revolve as an influencer-driven machine that broke the basic rule of sponcon: if youāre getting paid, you say so.
She alleges that:
- Revolve and its subsidiaries (Alliance Apparel Group, Eminent, FWRD) built a business model around paying high-profile influencers ā including Cindy Mello, Tika Camaj, and Nienke Jansz ā with cash and free product to promote Revolve brands on Instagram and TikTok. (Passle)
- Those posts looked like organic recommendations: tags, glam photos, aspirational captions ā but, allegedly, no clear #ad / #sponsored / āpaid partnershipā disclosure. (Passle)
- She bought Revolve items in 2025 after seeing those endorsements, paying prices she says were 10ā40% higher than comparable products on other sites because she believed the praise was unbiased. (hellowarrant.com)
In her telling, this is not just sloppy hashtagging. Itās a coordinated ādeceptive influencer marketing schemeā that:
- violated state consumer-protection statutes,
- artificially inflated prices, and
- misled at least a million customers about what they were really paying for. (Bloomberg Law)
The Lawsuit at a Glance š
| š Element | š§µ Details |
|---|---|
| Case name | Negreanu v. Revolve Group, Inc., et al., No. 2:25-cv-03186 (C.D. Cal.) (JD Supra) |
| Filed | April 2025 (Bloomberg Law) |
| Plaintiff | Ligia Negreanu, Revolve customer and social-media follower |
| Defendants | Revolve Group, Inc. + subsidiaries, and influencers Cindy Mello, Tika Camaj, Nienke Jansz (Passle) |
| Theory | Undisclosed paid endorsements misled consumers and violated FTC-inspired disclosure norms and state consumer laws (Kelley Drye & Warren LLP) |
| Claims | State consumer-protection statutes, unjust enrichment, negligent misrepresentation, plus nationwide and state classes (JD Supra) |
| Money sought | >$50 million in damages, restitution, and injunctive relief (Passle) |
The complaint leans heavily on the FTCās Endorsement Guides, which require clear, conspicuous disclosure whenever there is a āmaterial connectionā between endorser and brand ā payment, gifts, affiliate deals, or other benefits. (Buchalter)
Negreanu argues that Revolve and the influencers turned those rules into a suggestion box.
Why This Is More Than āForgot the #adā š
On the surface, this looks like a simple āyou didnāt put #ad in your captionā case. The underlying theory is more interesting.
Negreanu claims she and other consumers:
- trusted these influencers as tastemakers;
- assumed the praise was organic; and
- paid a price premium for Revolve pieces as a result. (hellowarrant.com)
That āpremiumā theory matters. It turns vague annoyance (āugh, undisclosed sponconā) into quantifiable harm: if the posts had been labeled as ads, the argument goes, consumers would have:
- bought less,
- bought elsewhere, or
- insisted on lower prices.
Thatās the bridge from āregulatory compliance issueā to ā$50M consumer class action.ā
It also lines up neatly with Revolveās own risk disclosures. In its 2023 annual report, Revolve warned that non-compliance with advertising rules, including disclosure obligations, could subject it to regulatory investigations and class actions affecting its business and results. (Glossy)
Plantiffās counsel is basically saying: you told investors this could happen; now it has.
Revolveās Response: Terms of Use as Shield š”ļø
Revolveās first serious move was not to argue āwe did discloseā but to say: you canāt sue us here at all.
In July 2025, Revolve moved to compel arbitration, pointing to its website Terms of Service. To place an order, Negreanu had to click āPlace My Orderā next to a conspicuous notice binding her to those terms ā including an all-caps arbitration clause and a class-action waiver. (The Fashion Law)
On September 17, 2025, the Central District of California agreed:
- Judge Michelle Williams Court held that Negreanu assented to Revolveās arbitration agreement and did not opt out.
- She ordered the claims against Revolve and its corporate affiliates into private arbitration and struck the class claims against them. (The Fashion Law)
Claims against the individual influencers remain in limbo, in part because of service issues, but the headline for brands is clear: Revolveās clickwrap and arbitration clause worked.
So the litigation that was supposed to become a public class-action test case for influencer advertising will, at least as to Revolve, likely play out behind closed doors.
From a corporate-law perspective, thatās almost as important as the merits:
- The same pattern (undisclosed influencers, price premiums, FTC Guides) can be replicated against other brands. (Morgan Lewis)
- Whether those brands face a public class action or a quiet arbitration will often turn on how their online terms were drafted and presented years earlier.
Influencer Marketing Law in the Background š²āļø
The case sits at the intersection of three overlapping frameworks:
FTC Endorsement Guides and influencer guidance
The FTC requires āclear and conspicuousā disclosure when there is a āmaterial connectionā between endorser and brand ā payment, gifts, affiliate revenue, or other financial or personal ties. āClear and conspicuousā means hard to miss, in plain language, and close to the endorsement itself (e.g., ā#adā, āPaid partnership with Revolveā). (Buchalter)
State consumer-protection statutes
Negreanu pleads violations of California consumer laws (and similar statutes for the putative nationwide class) on a theory that Revolveās non-disclosure was deceptive and caused economic harm. The FTC Guides are not directly enforceable by private plaintiffs, but they are often used as a benchmark for what counts as misleading. (JD Supra)
Contract and arbitration law
The fight over where the case is heard ā court vs. arbitration ā is all contract. The judgeās order shows that Revolveās clickwrap design and record-keeping were solid enough that the arbitration clause was enforced with little difficulty. (The Fashion Law)
In other words, this isnāt just a story about influencers forgetting #ad; itās also about:
- how you structure your customer contract;
- how you document assent; and
- whether youāre comfortable defending those terms under scrutiny.
Why This Case Matters Beyond Revolve š
Negreanu v. Revolve is often described in commentary as a āturning pointā case for influencer marketing risk. (Coblentz Law)
A few reasons:
- It targets both the brand and individual influencers, making clear that creators can be named defendants, not just ātalentā on the sidelines. (Passle)
- It uses FTC-style theories (material-connection disclosure) as the backbone of a private class action, not just an FTC or NAD enforcement matter. (JD Supra)
- It shows how quickly these cases can move into arbitration if a brand has robust online terms, essentially privatizing what could have been a big public precedent. (The Fashion Law)
It also lands in the middle of a broader wave: by mid-2025, multiple brands and influencers across industries were hit with similar class actions for undisclosed or poorly disclosed influencer deals. (Morgan Lewis)
Revolve just happens to be the most photogenic example.
Lessons for Brands, Influencers, and Lawyers š¼šø
You canāt run an influencer-heavy business in 2025 and treat legal as an afterthought. The Revolve suit is a reminder that three documents need to talk to each other:
| š Document Layer | šÆ What Needs to Be True After Revolve |
|---|---|
| Influencer contracts | Explicit, enforceable obligations to follow FTC (and foreign) disclosure rules; brand approval rights over captions and tags; audit and takedown rights if the influencer goes off-script. (Buchalter) |
| Social and marketing playbooks | Concrete examples of compliant captions and stories; āno post goes live without visible disclosure if you got anything of valueā baked into process, not just policy. (Buchalter) |
| Consumer-facing terms | Properly implemented clickwrap; clear arbitration/class-waiver strategy if you want disputes in private; strong but fair limitation-of-liability and choice-of-law clauses. (The Fashion Law) |
For influencers, the case is a warning that āthe brand will handle complianceā is no longer a safe assumption. Plaintiffs are naming individual creators and treating them as joint participants in deceptive schemes, not passive mouthpieces. (Passle)
For lawyers, itās a textbook āinfluencer warsā fact pattern to build into your templates:
- The pricing-premium theory,
- the way the complaint leans on FTC Guides without needing FTC enforcement,
- and the way a well-drafted arbitration clause can flip a public PR liability into a contained private process.
Revolveās lawsuit wonāt be the last. Itās just the one that turned a lot of quiet compliance slides into a very loud wake-up call.