If you’re a photographer, illustrator, or brand that has landed on this page after spotting your own work somewhere on this site, you’re in the right place, and you don’t need to brace yourself for a fight. This page explains where the pictures on Dapper Well come from, how credit is handled, and exactly what to do if something here belongs to you. Reading it should take about four minutes. Getting a response from me takes less than that.
My Position, Stated Plainly
Every image published on this site is used in the belief that it either falls within the fair use doctrine, sits in the public domain, or is covered by a license the site holds. Nothing here is published with intent to infringe anyone’s copyright or intellectual property, and no image is used to pass off someone else’s work as mine.
I’m one person running a menswear site, not a legal department, and I accept that a site with thousands of images can make mistakes. When that happens, my aim is to fix it fast and without argument.
Why Creators Get Taken Seriously Here
Photographers, stylists, illustrators, and product photographers do the work that makes a fashion site readable. A fit guide without pictures is a wall of numbers. Anyone who has tried to shoot a garment properly knows how much goes into a single clean image, from lighting to steaming the fabric to the eighty frames that got thrown away.
That work has value, and the people who made it have the right to decide how it gets used. That belief shapes everything below.
Where Every Image on Dapper Well Comes From
Images on this site come from six places. Here’s each one, honestly described.
Brand, editorial, and press images. Because Dapper Well reviews big and tall clothing, product photography from brands and retailers appears throughout the site, alongside lookbook images and press photos used in trend coverage and news write-ups. These are used in an editorial context, meaning commentary, criticism, comparison, and reporting, which is the kind of use the fair use doctrine is built around. Brand images are used at reasonable sizes, in service of the article they sit in, and credited to the brand or photographer where the source is known.
Paid stock photography. A good portion of the lifestyle and background imagery here is licensed from commercial libraries including Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Depositphotos, iStock, and Canva Pro. Each image is used under the terms of the license purchased for it, and license records are kept on file.
Creative Commons images. Some images come from Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Burst, and Flickr Commons, under licenses such as CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA. Where a license asks for attribution, attribution is given. Where a license restricts commercial or modified use, the image either gets used within those limits or doesn’t get used at all.
Original photography. A growing share of what you see here was shot by me. Flat lays of shirts with a tape measure laid across the chest, side-by-side comparisons of the same size from three different brands, worn shots of test garments after five washes. These belong to this site outright, and you’re welcome to ask about using them.
Public domain images. Older menswear illustrations, archival tailoring diagrams, and historical photographs occasionally appear in background or heritage pieces. These come from Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Open Access, and similar institutional archives, and are used because their copyright has expired or their creators released them to the public.
Reader and collaborator submissions. Some photographs are sent in by readers showing how a garment actually fits them, or by collaborators contributing to a piece. These are published only with the sender’s permission, and any reader who changes their mind can have their photo taken down by writing in. No questions, no delay.
How Credit Is Given
Where a license requires attribution, Dapper Well provides it. That usually means the creator’s name in the caption or in an image credit line at the foot of the post, a link back to the original source or the creator’s own page where one exists, and the license type named when the license asks for it. Brand images in reviews are attributed to the brand.
If a credit here is wrong, incomplete, or points at the wrong person, tell me and it gets corrected. Attribution errors are treated as errors worth fixing properly, not as small stuff.
Where This Sometimes Falls Short
Across hundreds of posts and thousands of social images, some things slip. A source link goes dead and takes the original credit trail with it. An image circulates so widely across forums and pin boards that the real creator is genuinely hard to trace. An early post from the site’s first months was put together before the current sourcing records existed.
None of that is deliberate, and none of it is an argument I’ll try to win with you. If your work is here without proper credit, that’s a mistake on my end and I’d rather hear about it than not.
If You Find Your Work on This Site
You have three options, and the choice is entirely yours. You don’t need to justify which one you pick.
- Ask for credit. I’ll add your name, your preferred credit line, and a link to your site or portfolio.
- Ask for a change. Different crop, smaller display size, a watermark left intact, a corrected link, or the image moved out of a particular context. Tell me what you want changed and it gets changed.
- Ask for removal. The image comes down completely, along with any copies of it in the site’s media library and on the site’s social accounts.
Write to images@dapperwell.com and say which one you’d prefer.
What Helps Me Act Faster
None of this is required. It just shortens the back and forth.
- The link to the page on Dapper Well where the image appears
- A link to the original, or something that shows the work is yours, such as a portfolio page, the original upload, or the file with its metadata
- Your name and how you’d like to be contacted
- Which of the three options above you want
What Happens Next
You’ll get a reply confirming I’ve received your message and read it. If ownership is clear, or becomes clear from what you’ve sent, the requested action gets carried out and I’ll write back to confirm it’s done, with the link so you can check for yourself. If something is unclear, I’ll ask one straightforward question rather than stalling. Requests are handled in the order they arrive.
How Quickly
Every rights holder message gets a response within 48 hours. Straightforward removals are usually handled the same business day, often within a couple of hours, because taking an image down takes about a minute and there’s no reason to make anyone wait for it.
You Don’t Need a Lawyer for This
Please don’t feel you have to send a formal legal notice, hire counsel, or file anything before getting in touch. A plain email works. I would much rather sort this out directly with you, quickly and in ordinary language, than have either of us turn a fixable image credit into a legal matter.
Get in Touch
Any question about an image on Dapper Well, whether it’s a credit, a license, a takedown, or permission to use one of my own photos, comes to the same place.
images@dapperwell.com
I read these myself, and I answer all of them.