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When I was a kid, crocheted and knitted pieces were the stuff of grandma magazines. You wouldn't really see fashionable, easy-to-wear pieces in those magazines. And if your grandma made something she saw in them, it would be chunky, itchy, and sometimes even unlike the item in the photograph.

Today, crochet is becoming trendy, and it has moved far beyond its DIY roots. Crocheted clothes have become the hottest new item for celebrities, influencers, and TV show hosts. In 2024, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce stepped out in London with matching crochet outfits amid a heatwave. Then, as summer approached, Love Island contestants chose to wear crocheted pieces: the girls donned bikinis, and the boys wore crocheted polo shirts.

Last summer, crochet was all the rage, but instead of the DIY vibe, many folks wanted the neat luxury that a crocheted silhouette or pattern could offer. Even Travis Kelce's aforementioned look was deemed "neat and subtle." The style director of the Gentlemen's Journal, Zak Maoui, told The Guardian that crochet was moving away from its connotations of the '70s hippy culture.

Distressed knits, sheer patterns, and neutral colors ruled the fashion of last summer. The trend was partly inspired by the characters in White Lotus and the opulence of the resort, with Aimee Lou Wood's character Chelsea in particular wearing a crochet dress and carrying several different crochet bags.

This year, clothing stores will no doubt have crochet options as well. But experts warn consumers that some "crochet" pieces in stores and online might not be crocheted at all. Generally the term "crochet" implies that a piece was made by hand. Crochet involves one hook and a spool of yarn, but today, manufacturers choose to make "crocheted" clothing items using machines.

Authentic crochet items take days to make (sometimes, as we see from this list, even months!) and fast fashion doesn't really work that way. So, the cheaper a "crocheted" piece is, the more likely it is that it's not authentic crochet. Ruth Herring, a crochet artist for JW Anderson and SS Daley, told The Guardian that cheap crochet items are usually lace knitted or made by a machine using an embroidery technique, technically making them not crochet.

The upside of knowing how to crochet is that you can always make the item yourself instead. If you see something you like at the store and suspect that it's of low quality, not authentic crochet, or simply too expensive, you can always try to make it at home. The hardest part can be to score the crochet pattern.

Sometimes it's not that hard, either. In 2020, for example, JW Anderson released the pattern of the viral cardigan that Harry Styles wore on the Today Show to everyone. Some people used it, no doubt, but many others made tweaked versions of the cardigan: some crocheted crop tops, and others made their own knitting patterns. So, the knitting and crochet community can be really resourceful when they want to.

Taylor Swift's crochet dress from 2024 had a similar fate. 15 hours after the photographs of her and Kelce were taken, fan and craft maker Krista McCloud made a crochet pattern available for free on her site. Thousands of people have downloaded it since then. "Pattern creation and testing usually takes several weeks, but everyone was ready with yarn and hooks in hand the moment they saw the image first posted online," McCloud told The Guardian.