Would you pay $285 for a skimpy blue bikini with multicolored elastic threaded through multicolored crochet trim?

How about $176?

Or better yet, $38?

These are the options available to crochet-bikini lovers now that Target has jumped into one of the messiest swimsuit tales ever to unravel.

The big-box retailer this spring began to offer its Xhilaration-brand version of a bathing suit first sold on a beach in 1998 by a Brazilian crochet artist. That bikini was later remade and marketed to great success by a New York entrepreneur as the perfect suit for high-end luxury buyers with tiny bodies and huge Instagram followings.

By making the swimsuit available to the mass market — or a look-alike of a copy of the original — Target has reinvigorated one of the bikini industry’s wildest intellectual property disputes in memory; one that involves lawsuits and federal court, and evokes questions about art, commerce, the trickling down of trends and the internet’s role in it all.