La Petite Salope changes brand name due to hard-core pornography connotations Luxury London fashion label La Petite Salope has re-named itself La Petite S***** after an influx of readily available porn imagery began to appear on search engine results. In French, La Petite Salope means 'little slut', but as the brand's creative director Nicola Helgesen explains: "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." But the East London-based, luxury womenswear label has fallen prey to the darker side of the internet, for when the brand name is typed into a search engine such as Google, highly degrading images, including what appears to be children taking part in sexual acts, are what is returned in search results. Helgesen says she tried to flood Google with the brand's own images, and reported the most serious imagery to Google and the Internet Watch Foundation, but the images are considered legal. "Of course if you use safe search this does eliminate the pornography but it also removes our company, even though we clearly do not sell or publish anything other than luxury women's clothes with absolutely no sexual reference what so ever" explains Helgesen. She adds: "Finally and regretfully we have decided to sever our links with 'Salope' and we are currently in the process of making all the changes involved in removing the name from our branding." The label, which was awarded NewGen sponsorship in 2004 is currently being rebranded to La Petite S***** but will keep its original name as a trademark and an internationally registered company. Understandably frustrated by the sordid connotations, Helgesen says the situation has caused "damage and heartbreak" as a designer and highlights the "moral issue as to why we have such highly offensive, degrading images available online."