common to only a few, permission should be sought, credit given, and monetary remuneration
awarded.

However, when a designer uses an already widely copied and shared style aesthetic, one that has become cross-cultural, more common to larger groups, the line is more blurry. We can’t stop people from making caftans, selling
fleurs-de-lis stencils, skirts reminiscent of an era, “French provincial” styled furniture.

I am trying to find when and how using an influence, an artistic aesthetic, a globally encountered
style might be ok, though still in need of crediting and when an act of cultural theft has been committed.

Comes up with food too. All kinds of cookbooks, restaurants, whole culinary empires, for instance,
sell Southern cooking, but have never credited black communities or specific black cooks who originated much of what came to be known as a regional cooking style.

Thank you for posting this. I’m still pondering. No brainer though about examples featured in the article you post. Plagiarism, theft, cultural rip-off.

each pattern represented a person/family, so that when a fisherman went overboard, they could ID the body. But the elaborate cables, bobbles, etc., have all been used again and again in patterns everywhere.

Scottish kilt plaids would be another example.

you say, now used everywhere. Actually, did not know the interesting, and sad, purpose for intricate Irish knit.
I guess the trick is to make that, losing original sources, more difficult, and yet what happens then to the rich design world we get to share in?
Thinking musical influences too.

Would we notice? Or even care?