Defend New Orleans closes its stores after 20 years | Business News
After Hurricane Katrina forced a nationwide diaspora of New Orleanians, the displaced resonated with a simple message: Defend New Orleans.
The slogan spawned in 2003, when founder Jac Currie started printing it on t-shirts that featured a grinning skull emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis above a musket. But after the storm, it took on a new meaning that went beyond protecting a city that is notoriously dysfunctional.
“Defend New Orleans” became a plea among New Orleanians whose pride for their home was left unshaken, even after a catastrophe.
“I thought we were defending New Orleans from some slow change. Not from some sudden disaster. Some gradual population problems. Not instant population problems,” said Currie in “No Place Like Home,” a documentary that followed the aftermath of Katrina.
Following the company’s newfound success, including two separate features in The New York Times and one on The Ellen Degeneres Show, DNO debuted its flagship boutique in the Garden District in 2011. Its second retail location launched inside of the former Ace Hotel in the Central Business District five years later.
But earlier this month, Defend New Orleans announced it was shutting the doors of its Garden District store and thanked customers for allowing it to grow “community and memories” for 14 years. The CBD location is also now closed.
People grieved the company in the comments section, including the New Orleans lifestyle brand Fleurty Girl, which expressed its love for DNO. Most asked why it was ending its two decades-long chapter.
Defend New Orleans is selling a t-shirt dedicated to its building and the Garden District neighborhood.
Currie, who did not comment further on the reason behind the closure, said last week that DNO will keep its online presence alive, selling classic t-shirts, accessories and hats on the website. One of the latest additions is a shirt dedicated to the former Garden District building and the neighborhood itself.
“We’re going to go back to the roots to sell our oldest designs or most timeless ones online,” Currie said.
‘Inspiring hope and pride’
After Katrina, Currie appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show to promote shirts produced by DNO and the release of “No Place Like Home,” according to website archives. Currie, who is a cousin of Degeneres, directed all proceeds to nonprofit organizations in hopes of bringing “New Orleans back to its full glory and preserve its rich cultural heritage,” the website read.
DNO debuted a new line of posters to benefit the Louis Armstrong Jazz Camp, an education program dedicated to honoring jazz and its next generation of musicians, in 2012. The company also sponsored traveling Louisiana musicians and raised funds for Gulf restoration and preservation efforts by selling shirts.
But in 2023, its efforts to promote the city’s culture became contentious, when the National Football League demanded that DNO refrain from using the centuries-old floral emblem on its products. The NFL claimed in a cease-and-desist letter that Currie engaged in “unauthorized use” of the logo for the New Orleans Saints.
Over the past two decades, the NFL has filed dozens of lawsuits against local businesses, claiming trademark infringement, though there is no record that DNO was one of them.
Designer Jac Currie’s “Defend New Orleans” T-shirts, originally created to protest gentrification, assumed a profound new significance after Katrina.
Currie’s attorney, Scott Sternberg, replied to the NFL, arguing that the fleur-de-lis has been “synonymous” with the city since its founding in 1718. Sternberg added how DNO has a registered trademark associated with its design.
“Since 2003, Defend New Orleans has been inspiring hope and pride in one of the most meaningful cities in the world,” DNO wrote in a statement at the time. “We will not advise them to stop.”