La Petite Salope changes its name

La Petite Salope, a luxury womenswear line based in East London, has been forced to re-name itself because of the negative connotations with porn imagery began to appear in search engine results for the brand. In French, the phrase ‘La

Petite Salope’ translates to ‘little slut’, which has led to people searching for the womenswear brand in a search engine being confronted with explicit, demeaning images of women, and some which appear to be child pornography.

So after more than 10 years of being named La Petite Salope, the London-based fashion label is rebranding itself as La Petite S*****, but will keep its original name as a trademark and an internationally registered company.

La Petite Salope rebrands as La Petite S*****

The company's creative director, Nicola Helgesen, told The Telegraph: “We are aware that our name always had slight connotations, but 10 years ago we considered La Petite Salope to be light-hearted, friendly and open to interpretation."

Helgesen reported the pictures to Google and the Internet Watch Foundation, but the pictures are considered legal, which has forced the womenswear label to the name change, which the company has said has caused “damage and heartbreak”.

The London-based company, which was awarded with a NewGen sponsorship in 2004, said: “We have reluctantly accepted that we can no longer trade under the company name La Petite Salope.

"Due to an influx of readily available and extremely explicit hard-core pornography appearing on Google under our company name we feel we can no longer ignore this problem.

“The process of changing over to La Petite S***** is a bit complicated and you may find many of your bookmarks and links no longer work, but we are in the process of solving all technical problems associated with the transition.”

Image: La Petite S***** SS13 collection