How Brands Reduce Textile Waste (and Which Laws Now Require It)
The fashion industry makes more clothing than it sells. UNEP counts 92 million tonnes of textile waste a year, and the European Environment Agency…
EU Forced Labour Regulation: What Fashion Supply Chains Must Do by 2027
On 14 December 2027, any product made with forced labour becomes illegal to sell in the European Union and illegal to export from it.…
What Is a Textile? Fibres, Fabrics and Labelling Law
A textile is any material made from fibres, whether those fibres are woven, knitted, felted or otherwise formed into a flexible structure. That sounds…
Commercial Modeling vs Fashion Modeling: Work, Pay and Contracts
People use “model” as if it describes one job, but commercial modeling and fashion modeling run on different casting criteria, different pay structures, and…
Design Patents for Fashion: Shoes, Bags and Hardware
Copyright protects a print on a shirt but almost never the shirt’s cut. Trademark protects a logo but struggles to protect an entire product…
Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products: The 90-Year Fight Over Whether a Color Can Be a Trademark
A dry cleaning company’s dispute over the green-gold color of its press pads reached the Supreme Court in 1995, and the ruling that followed…
French Luxury Fashion Brands and the Groups That Own Them
A French brand and a French-owned brand are not always the same thing. Several houses people assume sit inside one of France’s big luxury…
What Makes a Fashion House? Couture Rules and Legal Structure
People use “fashion house” and “haute couture” almost interchangeably, but only one of those terms actually means something in law. A fashion house is…
How to Get Into Modeling Without Getting Scammed
Someone stops you on the street, hands you a card, and says you have the look. The FTC has been warning consumers about that…
Copyright Infringement in Fashion: Prints, Photos and Designs
“Copyright infringement” sounds like a single legal question, but fashion actually asks three separate versions of it depending on what got copied. A stolen…
Rei Kawakubo and Clothes That Refuse to be Pretty
In October 1981, people entered a Paris showroom expecting a typical ready-to-wear season. Instead, they saw models in black torn sweaters, unfinished hems and…
The Battle of Versailles, 1973: The Night American Designers Beat Paris
On the evening of November 28, 1973, a fundraiser intended to restore the Palace of Versailles sparked the beginnings of American designers cementing their…
What Is Sustainable Fashion? Definitions, Labels and Laws
Sustainable fashion describes clothing produced and discarded in ways that reduce its environmental and social damage across the whole product life. The scale of…
Modeling Digitals: What Agencies Want and Who Owns the Photos
Model Francheska Pujols filed a lawsuit this year against the retailer Rainbow Shops in the New York Supreme Court, claiming the company took photographs…
Fashion Designer Salary: What Designers Earn by Level and City
The median fashion designer in the United States earned $80,960 in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that single figure…
TM vs ® Symbol: When a Fashion Brand Can Use Each (and How to Type Them)
A small superscript letter next to a brand name carries real legal weight, and mixing up which one to use is one of the…
Sustainable Fashion Brands: How to Check If the Claims Hold Up Legally
“Sustainable,” “eco-friendly,” and “conscious” appear on more clothing tags every year, and almost none of that language carries any legal weight on its own.…