Celebrity Payola: A Hollywood Quid Pro Quo Gets Dragged Into Court

Oct.. 16, 2006 — -- Hollywood's trendy Robertson Boulevard, where the stars go to shop, the paparazzi go to snap, and ordinary women spend their money to get a taste of fame.

Kitson is the store at the epicenter of Hollywood's secret money machine, where relationships of convenience between retailers, publishers and celebrities make everyone rich off the quest for Hollywood cool.

If you haven't heard of Kitson, chances are your teenage daughter has. After all, this is where Paris Hilton shopped in "The Simple Life."

And in real life, Paris, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson have been seen lugging shopping bags filled with booty from the much-hyped boutique.

So how do these photos generate so much money? Celebrities are photographed shopping at stores like Kitson, and the photos are then published in magazines such as Us Weekly and In Style, which tell readers exactly where they can buy the designs.

"Every designer, every store owner wants to be affiliated with celebrity now," says Janice Min, editor in chief of Us Weekly. "When you're looking at woman in middle America, any woman in America, she is not turning to Kate Moss for her fashion cues; she's not turning to Christy Turlington for her fashion cues. Those days are long gone. She's looking to women she can relate to, and whether it's delusional or not, woman feel they can relate to celebrities."

Frasier Ross, a Toronto native, came to Los Angeles to open Kitson with the aim, he says, of providing celebrity style to everyday Americans.

"We want them to feel like a celebrity when they come through here and that's what we try and do," Ross says. "And they can stand over there where Nicole Ritchie bought that bracelet, or look at Jessica Simpson's shoes that she picked up. hey saw it in People magazine and they want this bracelet."

Stores reap financial benefits when a star is snapped wearing their products -- and the benefits are substantial.

"You could take out probably a million ad pages in women's fashion monthlies and nothing would have more impact than, say, having Angelina Jolie wear your T-shirt when she goes grocery shopping," Min says. "That's the type of stuff that moves thousands and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise."

No one knows that better than Min, who prints photo after photo of celebrity purchases in powerhouse Us Weekly.

But the good feelings between Kitson and Us have suddenly come to an unhappy, strange and very public end: Kitson has filed a lawsuit against the glossy.

In legal documents obtained by ABC News, Kitson claims that Us Weekly is intentionally blocking the retailer from getting credit in celebrity photos.

Kitson says it's payback -- that Us Weekly is angry about a previous legal dispute between the two companies.

"Kitson is claiming that ... they are harming their business," says David Hauslaib, who writes about the legal spat on his online celebrity gossip blog, jossip.com. "And the evidence they are putting forth in their lawsuit are things like, US Weekly's editors purposefully editing out, cropping out a Kitson shopping bag so the logo isn't shown next to the starlet carrying it."

It's much ado about actress Brittney Murphy. In the original paparazzi photo, the Kitson name appears clearly on the shopping bag, but when the photo appeared in US Weekly, Kitson's signature blue bag was clearly cropped out.

Ross claims that Kitson was blacklisted, but Janice Min denies trying to harm Ross company.

"Us Weekly doesn't deliberately blacklist retailers; we don't blacklist anyone from the magazine," Min says. "The magazine is really a representation of who is hot, who's buzz worthy, who are women interested in this week."

This feud shows how high the stakes are in the fuss over celebrity sightings. In the business of selling clothes, accessories and -- sometimes -- junk to ordinary American women, Hauslaib says, tabloid magazines are often accused of being bought.

"It's sort of editorial payola," Hauslaib says, "where maybe money isn't necessarily changing hands but goods and services in exchange for favorable coverage in the magazine."

And where does that leave Kitson? Suing to get back its share of celebrity glow.

"We've come to a point where, you know, people have come just absolutely obsessed with certain celebrities and the culture and what they wear and what they do," Ross says. "It's not only about the movies they have -- they want to know what they wear and if they like the celebrity and the celebrity's wearing a red belt that's a hot item, they feel they're part of the celebrity."

But it was not the trendy red belt that caught our eye at Kitson. Frasier Ross showed us a T-shirt that he could not have designed better himself. It reads "Cancel my subscription -- I'm done with your issues."