Selling Clothing in Quebec: The French Language Requirements
By The Velocity Wear Team
Quebec is a substantial market and it operates under a language regime that has no parallel elsewhere in North America. The Charter of the French Language, strengthened by legislation in 2022, requires French across a wider surface than most brands expect — not just labels, but packaging, product inscriptions, commercial publications and websites offered to Quebec consumers.
The regime is administered by the Office québécois de la langue française and the detail matters, so this is orientation rather than advice. But the shape of it is straightforward and the practical answer for most apparel brands is simpler than the legislation reads.
Where it applies to a garment
Inscriptions on a product, on its container or wrapping, and on documents supplied with it, generally have to be in French. French may appear alongside another language, but the other language must not be given greater prominence.
That last clause is the one brands miss. A label with English in larger type and French underneath in smaller type is not the same as a bilingual label, and prominence is assessed rather than assumed.
The trademark question
There has historically been an exception allowing a recognised trademark to appear in a language other than French, and the scope of that exception has been narrowed and clarified by the 2022 amendments — including rules about generic or descriptive terms appearing within a mark.
For a clothing brand this is directly relevant, because a brand name is a trademark and a slogan on the front of a t-shirt might be. If your commercial identity depends on English wording appearing on the product, this is the area to take actual advice on rather than reasoning from first principles.
It covers your website too
Commercial publications — catalogues, brochures, and websites and social media offering goods to Quebec consumers — fall within the regime. A brand selling into Quebec online is not outside it because the server is elsewhere.
Practically, that means a French version of your product pages, sizing information, care guidance and terms, not just a translated homepage. Which is a real cost, and it is worth deciding deliberately whether you are entering the Quebec market or not.
The practical answer for most brands
- Treat French as a first-class language rather than a translation. Equal prominence on labels, hang tags and packaging, and a genuine French product page rather than machine output.
- Get the label wording right at production, since federal law already requires bilingual fibre content and adding the rest at the same moment costs nothing extra.
- Have the French checked by somebody who speaks Quebec French. Translation that reads as European French is noticed, and it signals a brand that did not take the market seriously.
- Decide consciously. Selling nationally means Quebec, and a brand that has not thought about it is usually already non-compliant rather than exempt.
Why it is worth doing properly
Beyond compliance, there is a commercial argument that gets overlooked. Quebec consumers are well served by brands that operate in French and poorly served by brands that treat the province as an afterthought, and a small brand that does it properly is competing against a lot of large ones that do it badly.
That is a real opening, and the cost of taking it is mostly a translation budget and the discipline to specify labels correctly the first time.
