Stock Photos for the Fashion Industry
Stock photography agencies with fashion, textile and model images.
What are stock photos? Stock photos are images — photographs or computer generated images — that can be purchased and used in your clothing catalogs, fashion magazines, fashion web sites or any other fashion publication. This section lists companies that offer fashion images, textile images or model images; they may have additional stock categories, but each has at least one category that pertains to fashion, textiles or modeling.
Stock photography and stock images have different licensing requirements. Pay close attention to the rules and regulations of each image resource: some companies offer royalty free images, and others may require a monthly licensing fee — check with each company prior to purchase. A good place to see fashion photography in context is the Fashion Week Photos site, and the photography sections of Apparel Search itself, starting with Fashion Images and Fashion Week Photos.
Stock Photography Agencies
Amatas
Stock photography resource listed for fashion imagery.
Burst
Burst by Shopify offers free stock photos, with a fashion collection built around the idea that fashion photos never go out of style.
Can Stock Photo
Can Stock Photo is a royalty free stock photography agency that believes professional stock images should be affordable and accessible to everyone. They add over 22,000 top quality images each day from photographers and artists around the world.
Fashion Photos on Flickr
Flickr — an online photo management and sharing application — hosts a fashion photos group where photographers share fashion imagery. Flickr's own goals are to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them, and to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
Fotosearch Stock Photography
Fotosearch allows users to search millions of images from 140 quality stock photography publishers at one site. Users can also find royalty-free clipart pictures, illustrations, stock video clips and maps; the database includes over 50,000 fashion-tagged images.
GoGraph
GoGraph offers flexible royalty free stock photography, vectors, illustrations, graphics and stock footage at low prices, with immediate purchase and download. GoGraph is a sister site of Fotosearch and Can Stock Photo.
iStockphoto
Stock photography library offering fashion and model imagery for publications and websites.
Photos.com
Stock photo library for editorial and commercial image licensing.
Shutterstock Fashion Photos
Shutterstock's fashion search opens its stock library at the fashion category — runway, retail, beauty and lifestyle imagery for commercial use.
Licensing, Photographers and Video
Some of the fashion photos in these libraries are available for use, but always be careful to respect copyrighted material: a downloaded comp is not a license, and editorial and commercial rights differ. When a project needs images made rather than licensed, visit the modeling web site to locate additional photography resources, and learn about fashion photographers in the modeling photographers directory. Motion has its own shelf: Fashion Video and Stock Fashion Videos cover moving images. Around the industry, see also the clothing industry portal, Fashion Industry Jobs and the Fashion Calendar in References below.
Common Questions
What are stock photos?
Stock photos are images — photographs or computer generated images — that can be purchased and used in clothing catalogs, fashion magazines, fashion web sites or any other fashion publication. The agencies below are listed because they offer fashion images, textile images or model images among their categories.
What licensing should I check before using a stock photo?
Stock photography carries different licensing requirements from agency to agency. Some companies offer royalty free images and others require a monthly licensing fee or per-image terms, so check the rules of each resource carefully prior to purchase — and as always, respect copyrighted material.
Where can I see fashion photography beyond stock libraries?
Apparel Search covers the photography side of the industry directly: the fashion images section, fashion week photos, stock fashion videos, and the modeling photographers directory for hiring a photographer instead of licensing an image.