Fashion Upcycling and Trademark Infringement: A Circular Economy/Freedom of the Arts Approach

Fashion upcycling offers unprecedented opportunities for the sustainable reuse of clothing: using second-hand garments as raw materials for new creations, upcyclers can ransform used pieces of clothing into new fashion products that may become even more sought-after than the source material. Considering the overarching policy objective to ensure a circular economy, the use of trademark-protected fashion elements for upcycling purpose can be qualified as a particularly important form of artistic expression. The reference to products of the original trademark owner is made for the socially valuable purpose of providing a vision of better, more sustainable production and consumption practices.