11/20/2007

Cheap Fashion Design

Now you can wear clothes by the same designers as Beyoncé, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez without paying a fortune. Three years ago the Swedish low budget brand H&M started to invite popular fashion designers to create special collections in their name. The concept was a big success and Karl Lagerfeldt, Stella McCartney and Madonna are some of the designer logos you've seen among the other clothes in the stores... or maybe haven't seen, since everything is usually sold out after just a few hours. Robert Cavalli is the latest designer creating garments for the Swedish giant, his collection was released in 200 shops around the world last Thursday with almost everything being sold out within an hour. The clothes were obviously hot stuff, and at the end of the day a lot of garments were on sale on Ebay for more than three times the price as in the stores. Personally, I didn't find the collection that special....even though leopard pattern is one of the typical characteristics in the collection (readers who are unfamiliar with my relationship to leopard patterns can get an update by the post Creating trends).

Last year Viktor and Rolf made an amazing collection à la Haute couture...and I was actually one of the crazy people skipping work and waiting outside for hours to get a head start. I wanted almost everything in the collection, but had picked two favorites I intended to fight for. Obviously I wasn't as desperate (or as good at track) as the other people in the store and didn’t manage to get to the finish line in time. When I did finally make it to the end, my sizes were all gone. I grabbed the garments in another size and tried to convince myself that they would look great even if they were a little bit oversized. However, a few minutes later a woman came up to me and wanted to trade her size small with my size large. Yey! So I ended up getting exactly what I wanted, or at least everything that I could afford. So honestly, I must say, that it was definitely worth it. The jacket and the sweater are still the two favorite items in my wardrobe and I feel happy each time I put them on.

If after reading this post, you want to experience an intense shopping moment, take a look at this video:




This video is from Robert Cavalli's opening in Amsterdam. If you want to read more about the collaboration between Robert Cavalli and H&M, take a look at this site.

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