A practical checklist. Not legal advice. Every situation is different — if you are actually about to ship a first collection, hire a qualified attorney who understands fashion. This piece is a map of the terrain, not the walk itself.

The unglamorous truth of a first fashion collection is that the design work is probably the least likely thing to sink it. What sinks first collections is almost always something in the following list: an unformed business entity, an unregistered trademark, a manufacturing agreement that gets signed by email and referenced by memory, a model release that never happened, or a California AB 633 registration that was overlooked because a Los Angeles designer didn’t realize the state considered them a garment manufacturer.

This piece is the map. There are seven items on it. If you’re a first-year designer preparing to ship a collection — or a first-year attorney or business partner helping one — this is what to walk through in the six months before anything is manufactured, photographed or sold.

1. Form the business entity

Almost every first-year designer we speak to starts as a sole proprietor without realizing it — meaning they and the brand are the same legal entity, and every liability the brand incurs is a personal liability. Manufacturing goes wrong, a model release turns into a lawsuit, a wholesale account files a chargeback — all of it lands in the designer’s personal name.

The fix is a Limited Liability Company (LLC) or an S-corporation, formed in the state where the business is actually operating. For most first-year designers, an LLC is the right call: simpler tax handling, cleaner operating agreement, and full liability protection provided the business is operated as a business (separate bank account, separate credit card, separate accounting).

Action items:

  • File the LLC formation documents with the appropriate secretary of state
  • Draft an operating agreement — required even for single-member LLCs, and non-negotiable if there is a co-founder
  • Get an EIN from the IRS (free, done online in fifteen minutes)
  • Open a business bank account and stop paying for brand things out of a personal account immediately

2. Register the trademark

Your brand name and your logo are the two most valuable things your brand will own for the first decade of its life. Trademark them before you build anything on top of them, not after.

A U.S. trademark registration with the USPTO is the legal foundation for enforcing your brand identity — against counterfeiters, against a larger brand that happens to file a similar name later, and against domain squatters. Filing costs $250 to $350 per class of goods, and the process runs 8 to 14 months in a typical year.

Before you file: run a clearance search. Ideally with an attorney, but at minimum on the USPTO’s TESS database, on Google, and on Instagram. A trademark that conflicts with someone else’s earlier filing is going to get rejected — the earlier you find out, the less expensive it is to rename.

Common mistake: filing only your logo but not your name, or vice versa. File both, as separate marks. They protect different things.

3. Register the copyright on distinctive design elements

American copyright law is famously bad at protecting fashion designs — the doctrine that clothing is “functional” and therefore uncopyrightable is deeply embedded in U.S. IP law. But three specific elements of a fashion collection are copyrightable, and worth registering:

  • Textile prints. An original print, pattern or graphic printed onto fabric is a copyrightable artistic work.
  • Lookbook and campaign photography. The photographs of your collection are copyrightable — file for a copyright in the photographs (typically owned jointly by the photographer and the brand under the terms of a properly written contract).
  • Marketing copy. Product descriptions, website copy, and press materials are copyrightable as literary works.

Registration is inexpensive ($45 to $65 per work) and is what turns copyright ownership into an enforceable right in federal court. Without registration, you can only sue for actual damages — with it, you can sue for statutory damages and attorneys’ fees, which is what makes copyright litigation economically viable at all.

4. Get manufacturing agreements in writing — every time

The single most expensive mistake first-year designers make is manufacturing on a handshake. Not because manufacturers are dishonest — most are not — but because a handshake agreement contains none of the information that matters when something goes wrong.

A proper manufacturing agreement covers:

  • Quantity, pricing, and payment terms (including deposits and final payment triggers)
  • Delivery dates and remedies for late delivery
  • Quality standards and remedies for defective goods
  • Who owns the patterns, samples and specifications
  • Intellectual property warranties — the manufacturer represents they are not using your designs for anyone else
  • Confidentiality
  • Termination and dispute resolution

For a first collection, this document does not need to be complicated — a straightforward manufacturing agreement can be four to six pages. But it needs to exist, in writing, signed by both parties, before any production starts.

If you are working with an overseas manufacturer, add jurisdiction and governing-law provisions so that a dispute doesn’t require litigating in a foreign court.

5. Model releases, photographer releases, and image usage rights

Every photograph in your collection lookbook, campaign, or e-commerce site requires three things to be legally usable:

  1. A model release, signed by the model (or their agency, on their behalf), specifying what uses the image is licensed for, for what duration, in what geography, and for what compensation.
  2. A photographer agreement, specifying who owns the copyright (default under U.S. law is the photographer, so this must be assigned in writing to the brand — a “work for hire” clause is the cleanest mechanism).
  3. A property release, if the shoot took place on private property that is identifiable in the image.

The specific area to get right in the model release is scope of use. A release that allows “editorial use” does not necessarily allow e-commerce use, does not necessarily allow OOH advertising, and does not necessarily allow the image to appear in a future book. If your ambition for the image is broader than one campaign season, the release needs to cover that ambition explicitly.

6. California AB 633 — if you are a garment manufacturer in California

If your business is based in California and you are manufacturing garments — including if you are having them manufactured on your behalf by a contractor — you are required by California Labor Code section 2670 et seq. (AB 633) to register with the California Labor Commissioner as a garment manufacturer, at $250 per year, with a mandatory education course.

This applies to designers who never touch a sewing machine themselves. The definition of “garment manufacturer” under California law is broader than most first-year designers realize, and non-compliance can trigger joint liability for wage claims filed by workers at your contractor’s facility — meaning if your contractor doesn’t pay their sewers minimum wage, you can be held responsible.

The good news: registration is straightforward. Fill in the form, take the online course, pay $250, and you are compliant.

If you are not in California, check your state’s equivalent — New York has an Apparel Industry Task Force with similar (though not identical) reporting requirements.

7. Business insurance — before, not after

The last item is often the last one designers think about, which is precisely why it needs to be earlier on the list. Three coverages are worth having in place before any product ships:

  • General liability — covers third-party bodily injury and property damage claims (a runway-show accident, a boutique visitor slipping on the floor at your pop-up)
  • Product liability — covers defective-product claims (a dye that causes a reaction, a garment component that fails)
  • Professional liability — covers claims arising from professional services (a client claiming a bespoke commission wasn’t delivered as specified)

For a first-year designer with a small collection, all three can typically be bundled into a business owner’s policy (BOP) for $500 to $1,500 per year, depending on the state and the sales volume.

The order to do these things in

If you’re staring at this list wondering what to do first, the order is roughly:

  1. Business entity + EIN + business bank account (week 1 — trivial and enabling)
  2. Business insurance quote and bind (week 2 — inexpensive, protective)
  3. Trademark clearance search + filing (weeks 2–4 — file this before you build a website)
  4. California AB 633 registration, if applicable (week 2 — fast, mandatory)
  5. Manufacturing agreement draft, ready before you sign on your first factory (weeks 4–8)
  6. Model / photographer / release agreements, in place before you shoot (weeks 8–12)
  7. Copyright registration on prints and photography, filed after the shoot (ongoing)

The one line that summarizes everything above

The point of doing all of this is to make sure that when something goes right — a big wholesale order, a celebrity wearing the collection, a retail buyer taking a chance — you actually own what you built.

Every one of the items above is a way of protecting the ownership. Skipping them doesn’t just create legal exposure; it means when the moment arrives, you may not actually own what everyone thinks you own.

This article is educational in nature and not legal advice. Every business situation is different. If you are preparing to ship a first collection, engage a qualified attorney who understands fashion industry practice — most legal work in this article is straightforward and can be done for a few thousand dollars total, which is orders of magnitude less than what it will cost to unwind a problem later.

Sources: California Labor Commissioner — Garment Manufacturers, USPTO trademark filing information, U.S. Copyright Office, and consultation with fashion-industry attorneys at firms including SRP Law (Los Angeles), Grant Attorneys at Law (New York), and Ballard Spahr Fashion IP.