The rainbow-check pattern is hard to miss.
It can be spotted on scarves in cities across the world, including some where temperatures rarely approach freezing. Those scarves come in many palettes and they can be purchased for hundreds of dollars at department stores, or for tens of dollars from street vendors. They are worn by various people and are as likely to be seen on subways as they are through the windows of chauffeured cars.
The original mohair-blend design was introduced by Acne Studios in 2019. At more than eight feet long, the style, called Vally, costs $320 and is almost as much a blanket as it is a scarf, an accessory that is typically between four and six feet in length.
The Swedish brand had been selling extra-long scarves for years before releasing the rainbow-check Vally, said Mattias Magnusson, Acne Studios’s chief executive. The scarf, he added, was inspired by a vintage chair upholstered in a plush, sorbet-plaid fabric.
“Our team got excited about concepting ideas based on it,” Mr. Magnusson said.
Like other Acne scarves, it can be identified by a large, white, rectangular tag that was developed to resemble labels on wool blankets like those from centuries-old brands such as Hudson’s Bay and Woolrich. Mr. Magnusson said some people have started to wear the scarf with its tag facing outward to show its provenance.
A representative for Acne Studios said sales of the rainbow-check Vally had increased each year since it was introduced. The style is sold at more than 380 locations — a mix of Acne stores and other retailers — across the world, the representative added, including the brand’s store in Singapore, where temperatures rarely drop below 75 degrees Fahrenheit. (It has sold out at that location, the representative said.)
Thom Bettridge, the head of creative and content at the e-commerce site Ssense, which has sold the style since 2019, said its popularity had “a lot to do with internet outfit culture” and was “an indicator of how much of our culture is user generated rather than dictated.”
“It’s not everywhere because a celebrity wore it,” Mr. Bettridge said. “It’s grass roots rather than top-down.”
Rickie De Sole, the women’s fashion director at Nordstrom, which has also sold the style since 2019, described it as a good foil for minimalist attire. “It gives a hit of color if you are wearing a more pared-back outfit,” she said. She could not recall another style of scarf that has become as widely embraced in recent years. “Not to my memory,” she said.
Those that have gravitated to the design include people catering to a crowd seeking the look at a lower cost. There are Reddit threads explaining how to knit D.I.Y. versions, while knockoffs are sold by AliExpress, a Chinese e-commerce site known for selling counterfeit goods, as well as by street vendors in New York that some may associate more with cheap pashminas than with luxury-good duplicates.
Ann Buenaobra, a 31-year-old consultant in Los Angeles, said she and her sister bought three Vally “dupes” from a sidewalk vendor in New York last winter at $20 per piece. (She chronicled her shopping spree in a TikTok video that has received nearly 10,000 views.)
She likes the version she bought for its size, weave and fuzzy texture. “It feels really unique,” Ms. Buenaobra said.
But as the style has proliferated, some have described it another way: ubiquitous. Mark Boutilier, a 26-year-old content creator in Brooklyn, shared a video on TikTok and Instagram in January jabbing at the accessory’s prevalence and encouraging his more than 200,000 combined followers on both apps to wear different scarves.
Mr. Boutilier’s video, which has received more than 730,000 total views, has drawn comments in defense of the style and others agreeing with his assessment. “Acne scarves got Washington Square Park in a chokehold,” wrote one commenter on Instagram.
“Acne scarves tie into the kind of memes that would say, ‘If you see this scarf in your neighborhood, your rent is going up,’” Mr. Boutilier, whose content focuses on men’s wear trends, said in an interview.
Mr. Magnusson of Acne Studios had a different reaction to the style’s prevalence. “I wish I had copyrighted it,” he said.
