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Although businesses such as Colle’s World Tricot, which supply handmade haute couture to some of fashion’s leading names, often suggest ideas for designs, they rarely – if ever – ask for copyright, preferring to be given a large order from the client. If Colle, who claims Chanel used her pattern without placing an order, wins her fight, she believes it could have widespread repercussions.

Because of the lawsuit, banks have refused to help her, former clients have disappeared and she has had to lay off all but a dozen employees, she added. “You cannot imagine what it is like,” she said, claiming she had been subjected to a strategy of “pressures and manipulation”. “You are faced with an enormous machine. You become the guilty party.”

(via Seamstress takes on might of Chanel over crochet pattern | Life and style | The Guardian)