High Fashion, Low Cost

$18.3 billion dollars were spent through online stores on clothing, shoes, and accessories in 2006! Shopping has become an outlet for many women and apparel seems to be the biggest reward. According to an article on azcentral.com, the average price of jeans is $175! That is just the jeans, not even a shirt to go with it. Everyone knows it doesn't cost $175 or even $100 to make a pair of jeans. With prices so outrageous, many women are left out of the fashion world, until now.

There are more and more designers catering to women with lower budgets. Stores are teaming up with top name designers to attract and keep customers. These customers may not have the money for designer clothes, but given the chance to wear designer at an affordable cost, they will pounce. It started out as a small trend, one designer marketing exclusively through one store. Now the trend keeps exploding.

Target is the biggest name in designer clothes at affordable prices. Isaac Mizrahi has been the biggest name in clothing for Target. His line offers options from jeans, shirts, dresses, shoes, accessories, all at affordable prices. Target is now announcing his line has expanding to wedding dresses! Yes, wedding dresses. With prices starting at $89.99, every woman should be able to afford a beautiful wedding dress at a reasonable cost. No need to spend $800 on a wedding dress anymore, just head to target.com to buy your dress for less than $100. And why you are there, pick up your veil, headpiece and shoes. In fact, you can get something for the entire wedding party, bridesmaid dresses, flower girl dresses are available as well as tuxedos. The tuxedoes may cost a little more than renting, but you get to keep them. Of course Isaac Mizrahi isn't the only designer Target has. For the pregnant woman, Liz Lange offers fashionable, trendy maternity clothes for less than regular maternity stores. Gone are the days when a woman had to give up her sense of fashion simply because she was pregnant.

Target is not the only store capitalizing on this growing fashion trend. Steve & Barry's added a few lines as well. On June 7^th the store will debut the Sarah Jessica Parker (most known for her role on "Sex & the City") line called "Bitten" with the motto, fashion is not a luxury. This line offers over 400 pieces of clothing, shoes, and accessories all for less than $19.98! Reasonable cost, for fashionable clothing. In fact, most of her jeans will be $14.98, quite a far fall from the $175 average cost of fashionable jeans. This fashion line even offers career suits with the two piece suits costing less than $40. Steve & Barry's also carries the very affordable basketball shoe line Starbury costing less than $15. So why you are there shopping for your inexpensive fashionable clothes, you can spend a little extra and get your kids new basketball shoes without breaking the bank. And because it is by a famous basketball star Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks, the kids might actually WANT to wear them!

Kmart offers Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer. Walmart is in the game with Metro7 and George. It seems like everyone has jumped into the pool for the customers. What does this do for the customers? Customers enjoy excellent choices of styles at excellent prices. With each store vying for the customers with their designers, prices continue to fall, while the styles continue to improve. Gone are the days of "walmart" clothes that no one wanted to be seen in, but that is all that could be afforded. Now it's not a big deal if a woman is seen in a dress from Walmart or a pair of jeans from Target.

As women, we have the responsibility of taking care of our families. The struggle to afford high quality, high fashion clothing and still feeding and clothing our children is ending. We are being offered a great chance to dress our best at low affordable prices. By buying these clothes, we are telling other designers and stores that while we do care about how we look, we also care how much it costs us. With these lower prices, we are now able to afford a little more, instead of buying one outfit for $75, we are able to get two, plus a pair of shoes! Tell the retailers, if you offer lower prices, we will buy more! Or at least save so much that the kids can get something too. Maybe even dad. Maybe.