Top image: Romance Was Born (2009), Paul Smith (2010), Henry Holland (2011)

Last year, a whole lot of crochet started popping up around the place. But not just any crochet - a very particular pattern of squares in loud colours on a black background. It began with Romance Was Born, who delivered two versions of the look - one a legit, hand done crochet, and the other a digitally printed take on the style.

Cate Blanchet rocked the real thing on the red carpet - to fanfare from some and sneers of 'Cate Blanket' by others,  but it didn't stop there. In June, English design powerhouse Paul Smith sent out a take on the look that felt awfully familiar, a sloppy, off the shoulder dress that looked beyond coincidentally similar to the Romance version.

Peter Alexander then offered their own take on the print. As did several other Australian high street retailers, to varying degrees of aesthetic success.

Well, it seems that crochet copying isn't out of style yet - Henry Holland was the latest designer to show a very close-to-copy of the print two days ago at London Fashion Week. 

It's great to see that Australian designers are capable of launching trends, but it would be much nicer if they were a source of legitimate inspiration rather than material for plagiarism. Perhaps our relative isolation makes it easier for bigger name designers to lift ideas in a manner more direct than they ordinarily would with labels that get a bit of Northern Hemisphere exposure. 

Of course, that particular print as been so significantly copied, Holland could be referencing the Paul Smith look, without ever having laid eyes on the Romance original.

Thanks to Mz Fitz and Melanie Hick for pointing the story out. This isn't the first time a major trend has been launched (largely without credit) by an Antipodal designer, Frockwriter  has a great account of how the same thing happened with Karen Walker and a print of pearls over a decade ago. 
Henry Holland images from London Fashion Week, Peter Alexander images via Pedestrian.