If you’re a photographer, illustrator, or brand who landed on this page because you spotted your work somewhere on North Collar, thanks for coming here first instead of somewhere worse. You’re in the right place, and this page exists to get your concern handled quickly and without a fight.
Our Stance, Plainly Stated
North Collar publishes a lot of pictures. Outfit breakdowns, fit comparisons, haircut references, product shots. Every third-party image on this site is used because we believe the use falls under the fair use doctrine, sits in the public domain, or is covered by a license we hold or a permission we were granted.
We don’t want anyone’s work without their blessing. There is no scenario where North Collar knowingly takes an image, strips the credit, and hopes nobody notices. If something here is yours and you’d rather it wasn’t, say so and we’ll deal with it.
Why This Matters to Us
A style site lives or dies on photography. The difference between a useful post about shoulder fit and a useless one is usually a photo where you can actually see the seam. We know how much work sits behind a single clean image, from the lighting setup to the retouching to the years of practice before any of that.
So the people who shoot, draw, and design the visuals we rely on aren’t a resource to us. They’re the reason half our content works at all. That’s the starting point for everything below.
Every Place Our Pictures Come From
Here’s the honest breakdown of where the images on North Collar originate.
Brand, editorial, and press photography. A men’s style site covering jackets, shoes, grooming products, and trend coverage will naturally show the things it’s talking about. When North Collar reviews a product, criticizes a cut, or reports on what a label released this season, we may use brand or press imagery in that editorial context, which we believe qualifies as fair use for commentary, criticism, and reporting. Where a brand or photographer should be credited, we credit them, and where a press kit sets usage terms, we follow them.
Original photography. A growing share of what you see on North Collar is shot by us. Fit tests, side-by-side shirt comparisons, before-and-after haircut references, and detail shots of things we actually bought and wore. These belong to North Collar outright and are taken specifically for the posts they appear in.
Creative Commons licensed images. We use images released under Creative Commons licenses, including CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA, from platforms like Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Burst, and Flickr Commons. Each license comes with its own terms, and we honor them. If a license calls for attribution to the photographer, a link back, or a note about modifications, that’s what we provide.
Licensed stock photography. Some images are purchased or licensed through commercial stock libraries such as Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Depositphotos, iStock, Getty Images, and Canva Pro. These are used within the terms of whichever license was bought, including limits on print runs, resale, and derivative use.
Public domain material. Older reference imagery, particularly archival menswear and barbering photography, sometimes comes from collections where copyright has expired or the creator released the work into the public domain. Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress, and Smithsonian Open Access are the usual places we pull from.
Reader and collaborator submissions. Readers send us photos. A guy asks about the fit of his suit jacket and attaches a picture, or a barber sends a shot of a cut they want to explain. Anything like this appears on North Collar only with the sender’s permission, and we remove it on request, no questions asked.
How We Handle Credits and Links
Where credit is owed, we give it. That means naming the photographer or brand, linking back to the original source when a working link exists, and noting the license type where the license asks for it. Attribution usually sits in the caption, directly beneath the image, or in a credits line at the end of the post.
If we’ve credited you incorrectly, spelled your name wrong, or linked to a dead page instead of your current portfolio, tell us and we’ll correct it. Fixing a credit takes a couple of minutes and we’d rather have it right.
When We Fall Short
We’ll be straight with you. Across hundreds of posts and thousands of pins and saves, a credit occasionally goes missing. Sometimes a source page disappears and takes the attribution trail with it. Sometimes an image has been reposted so many times that the original creator is genuinely hard to track down. Sometimes it’s just a mistake made on a busy afternoon.
None of that is deliberate, and none of it is an excuse. If you find your work on North Collar without proper credit, it’s an error we want to fix, and we treat it as our problem to solve rather than yours to prove.
Three Ways We Can Sort This Out
Found your work here? You choose what happens next. Not us. Pick whichever of these three you want:
- Add credit. Keep the image where it is, and we’ll add your name, your preferred credit line, and a link to your site or portfolio.
- Change how it appears. Resize it, crop it differently, uncrop it, swap the link, remove a watermark overlay, add one, or stop using it in a particular format. Tell us what you want changed and we’ll change it.
- Take it down. No debate, no negotiation, no request that you justify the decision. We remove it.
Write to images@northcollar.com and name the option you want. If you’re not sure which one, just describe the problem and we’ll suggest something.
What Helps Us Act Fast
You don’t have to format this a particular way, but the more of the following you include, the sooner this gets resolved:
- The URL of the North Collar page where the image appears
- A link to the original, or anything that shows the work is yours, such as a portfolio page, a client credit, or the original upload
- Your name and the best way to reach you
- Which of the three options above you’d like
What Happens After You Send It
We confirm we got your message, usually with a short reply so you’re not left wondering. We check the claim against the page in question, which normally takes a quick look rather than an investigation. Then we do what you asked, whether that’s crediting, adjusting, or removing.
Once it’s done, we write back to confirm, with a link so you can see the change yourself. If your request touched more than one post, we check the rest of the site for other uses of the same image and handle those too.
No Lawyer Needed
You don’t have to send a formal legal notice, hire counsel, or write anything that sounds official to get our attention. A plain email works. Honestly, a plain email works better, because it lands in the same inbox we check every day and gets answered directly rather than routed through anybody.
We’d much rather hear from you directly than find out through a third party that something has been bothering you for months.
How Quickly We Respond
Rights holder messages sit at the top of the pile at North Collar. We reply within 48 hours, and most straightforward takedowns are handled the same business day we receive them. If you’ve written and heard nothing after two days, send it again, because something went wrong on our end.
Still Have a Question?
If anything here is unclear, or you want to talk through a use before deciding what to ask for, we’re happy to have that conversation. Reach us at images@northcollar.com and we’ll get back to you.