Oh Topshop, what a wonderful pair of dark shewd eyes you have!

It is humorous (albeit strategically clever) that Topshop have been reduced to knocking off even their own designs. You may have noticed that since Kate Moss' pansy dress last year, Topshop have been churning out endless lines of "tea dresses". Kate Moss' one-shoulder frill dress has also popped up in Topshop's own collections in its various forms, all doubtlessly "inspired" but looking suspiciously similar. I've noticed too that a sun dress which looked identical to that in Kate Moss' current collection which is retailing for 40+, but in cream was sold on the Topshop website 2 weeks before and demanded a much less challenging price of 25 pounds.

There have been many of these little ironic incidents, and at first I too chuckled with ridicule. But this isn't surprising if you think that Topshop are a giant fashion power which survive on the sole appeal that it copies trends and designs off the catwalk at affordable prices, before the catwalk hits the shops. So here they've demonstrated what they are best at, which is basically copying. It was ironic that high street chains even dared to approach designers to do collaborations in the beginning, because the designers basically copy, or what they call "translate", their own catwalk designs for these stores, something that these stores were already brilliant at, without the need for these designers. It is a cunning commercial plan that saw using a designer's name on a label automatically warranted a mark-up of 50%, more money for Phillip Green's cash-hungry appetite (let's not even mention what they are doing to children in third world countries).

I digress, these collaborations which pull in an incredibly high mark-up have materialised through no fault of the designers or their will to participate. In the end, it looks like an ultimatum: collaborate with us and we will give you 20% of the inflated prices, or we will knock you off anyway and give you nothing.