Today, London Fashion week celebrates its 40th anniversary.
What does 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐨𝐧 and 𝐋𝐚𝐰 have in common? Maybe more than one can imagine.
Industrial designs need to be protected to reduce the risk of imitations, to develop business partnerships and to enhance competitiveness of all types of businesses in the fashion industry.

Registration of a design helps the owner to prevent all others from exploiting its new or original ornamental or aesthetic aspects.
Despite this, among the most cited explanation for not registering fashion designs is that the short product life cycle – often no more than one six-to-twelve month, season – does not justify the considerable time and financial cost involved.
To foster the protection of industrial design, the European Union offers an unregistered form of protection for industrial designs for a relatively short period of time. This constitutes an important help for companies with limited budgets, and for all those that wish to test market new designs before deciding which to register.

But there is more! For Fashion items with a long life span it is crucial to be protected against any kind of possible imitation and to prevent others from using the design. For this reason, companies can file an application for a registered industrial design to the 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞 (𝐄𝐔𝐈𝐏𝐎). It is also possible to request at the time of filing that the publication of the application be deferred for up to 30 months. In this way, the EU also protects those who may want to keep their design secret until it comes to market.