Is there a central record of high street clothes designs?

[Paperbagsaremine]

I've had a search set up on eBay for yonks now, looking for a particular dress I remember from the 80s - a flapper-style dress in t shirt cotton with broad black and white stripes with cap sleeves and a diagonal dropped waist. The stripes were vertical below the waist and diagonal - parallel with the slanted waistline - above.

There are GAZILLIONS of black and white striped dresses. I still haven't found this one - but the question occurred to me : -

How do dress designers avoid inadvertently violating copyright by accidentally coming up with the same or very similar design? Is there any sort of central reference they can check against?

No, not for old stuff. But it would be fun. Wouldn’t be copyright, would be a design right archive.

Look at Lyst for modern stuff - they have 8 million pix. Museum in the making.

I know the dress you mean and at least two or three high street stores did it in tee shirt jersey. Bananarana concert pix might help.

Dress designers on the high street try to copy without getting caught far more than they worry about being ripped off.

Retail lawyers advise on how to tweak designs by the talented or high end folk - occasionally the latter win in court, but mostly real designers put up with being stolen from by big stores. Sometimes the big store invests in the smaller designer.

Copyright is about COPYING. If you create a similar design without copying someone else's design, then there is no copyright infringement.

Different for patents but that's for inventions. Doesn't need to be any copying - if someone invents something similar by coincidence, the patent holder can prevent them from commercialising it.

Here you go

What do you think about this vintage tesco Casual dresses I just found on Vinted? It's a a size XL / 14 for £22.00: https://www.vinted.co.uk/items/4712290361-80s-vintage-ladies-dress-blue-white-chevron-drop-waist-tesco