AS SHOPPERS FILL Dublin’s high streets this December searching for something “unique,” few realise that the originality behind many garments may already have been stolen.

That striking geometric print on a fast-fashion dress or the distinctive cut of a coat might trace its origins to a small Irish studio. Behind the sparkle of Christmas commerce lies a quiet erosion of creative ownership.

Recent research by Naoise Farrell and Romina Maddalena of Griffith College Dublin and Paul Davis of Dublin City University reveals a troubling reality. Irish fashion design graduates enter the industry ill-prepared to protect their work. The study highlights a structural gap between what students learn and the intellectual-property (IP) challenges they face in practice.

Design appropriation is now industrialised. The European Union Intellectual Property Office estimates that infringement costs the creative industries €38 billion annually, even though the sector employs more than six per cent of Europe’s workforce.

Irish designers such as Emma Manley and Simone Rocha have spoken publicly about seeing their creative signatures reproduced abroad without acknowledgement. For a micro-enterprise operating from a shared studio in Galway or Cork, a copied design is not just lost income. It is the dismantling of a personal identity painstakingly built over years.

Through interviews with graduates, industry mentors, and micro-enterprise owners, the research team uncovered a consistent pattern. Most of those interviewed could not clearly distinguish between copyright, design right, and trademark protection.

Few knew how to register a design, draft a licence, or challenge infringement. The assumption that such skills can be “learned later” has proved naïve. “Later” often means after the damage is done. This gap, described by the researchers as “capability oversight”, reflects how creative programmes celebrate imagination while sidelining strategy and law.

Graduates may leave college technically brilliant but legally blind.........

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