Fashion clash: The celebrity nightmare that can't be avoided

It's the fashion clash every girl wants to avoid: turning up in the same dress as someone else. But it's apparently harder to prevent than you might think. How else to explain the Miu Miu dress that turned up on no fewer than three different glossy magazine covers last week?

Lily Allen sported a purple version for UK Elle; Eva Mendes's was yellow for W; and Freja Beha Erichsen wore orange for British Vogue. But not even the different rainbow hues could disguise the fact that all three were wearing the same dress, a strappy appliquéd little number that retails for between £1,515 and £3,210.

Talk about the kiss of death for the outfit in question. Not that it's the first dress to suffer such a fate.

Miu Miu

Even before that dress hit the headlines, fashion editors had tipped the lacy lilac version as the pick of the collection. Carey Mulligan clearly liked it; she sported a tamer version for her debut at the New York Met's Costume Institute Gala.

Roland Mouret's Galaxy

The hourglass-enhancing number by Roland Mouret became the uniform du 2005 for just about every female celebrity going, from Rachel Weisz to, um, Carol Vorderman, and ripped-off versions of the dress quickly flooded the high street.

Hervé Léger's Bandage

On paper, a body-con tube should be an unlikely fashion winner, but after Kate Winslet proved she could squeeze into a black version, there was no dampening the demand for the dress, which gets women trimmer than a session of liposuction.

Victoria Beckham's Orthez

The Spice Girl turned designer defied sceptics by turning out a more than decent first collection last year; her strapless Orthez soon sheathed celebrities including Elle Macpherson and Brooke Shields.